Remote home directory

[Guest Linz]

Hi!

I'm currently working on getting some linux computers to work coherently with the rest of the windows network on our campus. The network are managed with Active Directory.

I have set up winbind to allow every user in AD to log on the linux computers, but I also want a centralized home directory so that kde and other user options are available independently of which linux computer the user logs on to. Is this possible?

 

The ideal option in this case would be to have the users home directory stored on the same win2000 server that currently works as home for the windows computers.

 

Any ideas?

 

edit: Are there any other options to autherize users on a AD network than winbind? It would be great if there were any options to retrieve user data such as emailaddresses, etc, which are stored in the user records in AD.

Edited January 12, 2004 by Linz

[fissy]

I have set up winbind to allow every user in AD to log on the linux computers, but I also want a centralized home directory so that kde and other user options are available independently of which linux computer the user logs on to. Is this possible?

Its certainly possible

 

if you want to do it via samba, you would have to somehow set it to mount /home/username via smbfs. The fstab line might look something like this

 

//servername/$homes /home/$user smbfs some,options,here x x

 

 

i think you might need to do a lot of reading to get it to work.

 

a better solution would be to do it using nfs i think with a separate linux server... depends on your funds really.

 

good luck!

-fissy

 

ps, the docs on the samba page are quite useful imo

[Michel]

Ok, as a person who has never run a server in his life, I'm going to try to help you. But there are qsuite some persons here that have quite some network knowledge. I'm presenting you some info, not a solution, I leave that to the others :):

 

I suppose you can use active directory.

(it's for redhat, but may help you too)

Samba3.0 isn't beta any mreo I believe:

http://www.netadmintools.com/art172.html

 

This won't be enough I think ... for what you want, let's see:

(this is helpful I think)

http://hotham.net/professional/linux/ad_samba3

 

http://linuxgazette.net/issue36/blair.html (look for PAM)

 

I would search around for maybe tighten the secuirty mroe if possible.

--------------

An ntfs home-directory is maybe better? for ntfs, you can have a look here maybe:

 

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/R...ide/ch-nfs.html

 

maybe interesting:

 

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=2174

 

I suppose you know kerberos ..it's also a good authentication method:

if you don't know it, some info(read it at samba, so I suppose you know, anyway):

 

The user only has to give his pasword once. From then on, when the user tries to access a service(=server(something else??): ftpserver1, ...), the service checks if the user is allowed to access it. So, he/she only has to login once and from then on, he/she doesn't have to enter a pasword anymore, the rest is checked by the KDC(teh authentication server). Traffic is/can be encrypted. You can set up realms ..

 

----------

 

I'm always saying that if I would need a server, I would use xfs-filesystem for it, since I read their docs and saw some benchmarks and it looks like it gives good performance at low cpu, ... Anyway I think it's good. You could even set up a linux-system with samba-server and use samba for authentication. This is possible not? Anyway, you probably don't want to go through this stuff sincce I suppos eyou have already quite some accounts and I don't know if is good, since I never tried it myself. I think I would setup kerberos-authentication I suppose and ntfs(anyway tried this configuration btw?) or so, ...I'm not sure, it's up to you ofcourse.

 

Hopes this helps you some

Edited January 17, 2004 by Michel