Re: basic NFS/NIS help requested

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Date: 27 Jan 2004 10:12:18 -0800

rb <rb@panix.com> wrote in message news:<i33ad4acn6x.fsf@iris.rationalbuilding.net>...
> I would like to set up one (Indigo2) of a network of three computers to
> be a file server for the other two, and I would like to mount the
> users' home directories on the server.
>
> What I am not clear about is how to take an existing user of one of the
> client machines (Octane), and add that user to the server, and migrate
> his home directory to the server.
>
> If I understand adding a new user to the network, you create the user on
> the server and then essentially copy the user info to the clients. Can I
> do the reverse? Copy the user's line from /etc/passwd on the client
> machine to the server machine (assuming there is no conflicting user ID
> number).
>
> Once the user's account is set up on the server, can I then copy the
> existing home directory from the client machine to the server, following
> the procedure outlined in the "Storing Home Directories on a Second
> Disk" section of Chapter 6 in the "Personal System Administration
> Guide"? So that when the /usr/people/whoever directory is mounted from
> the server its contents are the same as they were (at the time of
> copying) on the client machine.
>
> Have checked through the documents and can't find a description of how
> to do this...thanks very much for any help, instructions, or pointers,

You can copy the single line from the passwd file from the client machines
to the server machine as long as user names/id's don't conflict. This
will work all the same unless you change a password on one machine it will
only be changed on that one machine and not the others. If you want to
change it "for all the machine logins" you'd need to run NIS. But that's
a little overkill for just 3 machines, so what you are doing will work fine.

So. Copy your user directories over to your server and put them where
you please. Such as /usr/people/username or some other directory.

then you will need to export your file system you want to NFS mount
to the other systems. Edit /etc/exports and add a line for your file
system or directory to export. You can have more than one line if you
want to export more than one thing, like a file system from a 2nd disk.

examples:
/usr/people
/usr/disk2
/home

After editing the file you need to run the exportfs command.
exportfs -a

On your client machine you can mount this in an existing directory
or a new directory (your choice). Make a directory (such as /home)
if needed to mount NFS filesystem to.

mkdir /home

To manually mount the filesystem at the prompt use this command
mount servername:/home /home

To make this automatic so it mounts at boot time, add it to
your /etc/fstab file.

example
servername:/home /home nfs rw 0 0

I think this should help you.

-mike

> RB
> --

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