Hello - does anybody know or knows a tutorial - of how to build a small home network with up to 4 /home shares on a server (Freenas) I would like to be able to log in and use the same directories from any computer in my home network.
The Freenas part is relatively clear to me - what I am not so sure about is the client part (all opensuse 11.1 + KDE 4.2)How do I make opensuse to use/link to the home directories (documents, kmail)on the server instead of local directories. And how do I manage permissions?
Looking forward for replies.
I would like to add that I know about Swerdnas tutorias for Samba/CIFS networking, but could not find any information regarding remote home directories. I have made Sambq shares but they seem to have some permission issues. That why I would like to do it with NFS.
Tarp wrote:
>
> I would like to add that I know about Swerdnas tutorias for Samba/CIFS
> networking, but could not find any information regarding remote home
> directories. I have made Sambq shares but they seem to have some
> permission issues. That why I would like to do it with NFS.
>
>
I guess there isn’t otherwise someone would have pointed it out by now. I’ve
been looking for one myself for a while 'cos I’ve got a fist-full of
questions as to best practice etc.
Currently I’m using openLDAP for authentication and /home resides on the
server which is exported using nfs.
Alan
For NFS, it’s not that hard to share if you stick to some rules.
Firstly make the user UIDs match on all the machines. This means that if your account is UID 1000 on machine A, also make it UID 1000 on machine B. It will simplify life a lot, you won’t have to delve into id mapping and that sort of thing. It’s also more conducive to unified LDAP authentication later.
Permissions work exactly the same way on remote resources as they do on local, you can chmod, chown, read, write, etc, with the exception of the root user. Root is by default prevented from running as root on remote resources. This is security measure and another reason why you don’t want to do normal work or play as root.
You can mount a remote resource as your home directory, but this makes logins more fragile because if the remote machine is down, you are locked out. What you could do is mount a remote directory as say /data and have a symlink point to directories within this from your home directory, e.g. /home/joe/music -> /data/joe/music.
ken yap wrote:
>
> For NFS, it’s not that hard to share if you stick to some rules.
>
> Firstly make the user UIDs match on all the machines. This means that
> if your account is UID 1000 on machine A, also make it UID 1000 on
> machine B. It will simplify life a lot, you won’t have to delve into id
> mapping and that sort of thing. It’s also more conducive to unified LDAP
> authentication later.
>
> Permissions work exactly the same way on remote resources as they do on
> local, you can chmod, chown, read, write, etc, with the exception of the
> root user. Root is by default prevented from running as root on remote
> resources. This is security measure and another reason why you don’t
> want to do normal work or play as root.
>
> You can mount a remote resource as your home directory, but this makes
> logins more fragile because if the remote machine is down, you are
> locked out. What you could do is mount a remote directory as say /data
> and have a symlink point to directories within this from your home
> directory, e.g. /home/joe/music -> /data/joe/music.
>
>
Yeah - I used a similar idea in a previous server build by having the user’s
Documents folders mounted using nfs but of course the settings were
different on each client - hence mounting the whole of /home via nfs.
Having /home by nfs causes problems with googleearth and gimp etc because
they try and use temporary caches in $HOME and it’s a lot slower over nfs
than using a local disc. With some work it’s possible to either change the
cache settings or symlink the caches to a fs on the local system but it’s a
pain both to do and to work out which packages need tweaking like this.
Then of course there’s unison …
This is one of the (many) reasons I was looking around for some sort of
tutorial/recommendations/wiki regarding setting up a SOHO mixed system.
After all I can’t be the only one in this situation.
I’d have thought that there would be something on the openSUSE site but, if
there is, I’ve not found it.
Alan
I have been away for a period - but anyway: Thanks a lot guys! - your replies gave me some hints in setting up a soho and now I am puzzling with a NAS running NFS - and slowly getting it to work. Main problem left is codepage issues you people may not have since I have filenames with danish lettes æ, ø and å… - and for me it is not possible to get shell access to the NAS (yet)
Excuse me. I never heard about NFS before but i interested with this stuff. Can anyone tell me how to get the information for this stuff and how to get it?
TQ
Networking is a very deep pool indeed. Here is a link to a NFS Introduction (but it does assume some basic networking knowledge):
This excellent tutorial by Swerdna is probably what your after:
Samba and Suse: HowTo Set up an openSUSE-Windows Home Office LAN/Network. Versions 10, 11
It will get you started anyway. 
thank you very much deano_ferrari.
…but as I read it Swerdnas excellent tutorial is all about Samba/Cifs and not about NFS…
Understood, but it has a clear, informative style, to help you become familiar with network configuration (particularly orientated to Windows-orientated LANs).
If you want to set up a linux-only LAN then NFS will be ok for you. Have a look at this openSUSE NFS Configuration Tutorial.
Keep us posted.
:)Thanks a lot - I’ll too will have a look at the NFS guide - NFS seems to be faster and safer in a linux-only network - as far as I can read in several posts.
It’s not too difficult:
- Manage user accounts through NIS
- On the FreeNas export the /home
- On the PC’s configure user auth. as NIS
- On the PC’s configure NFS-client, mounting /home from the FreeNas.
From now on all users will be the same users everywhere, will have their /home from the FreeNas everywhere