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Here's the situation for a client. They have a NAS and some Red Hat boxes. What they want is for a users home directory to be stored on the NAS ...
  1. 03-12-2009 #1
    fskylemcauliffe
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    Creating network login directories from a NAS



    Here's the situation for a client. They have a NAS and some Red Hat boxes. What they want is for a users home directory to be stored on the NAS and mounted on any given machine when they log on it.

    What i have tried is setting up an NFS server to act as a middle man. I mount the NAS shares on the NFS server and then try exporting them to the Red Hat boxes. Another thing i tried was pam_mount. Each to no avail.

    Am i overlooking a simple solution to this? From what i understand NFS can only export resources that are physically on the machine. Of course these are not on the NFS server, but on the NAS.

    Any help here would be greatly appreciated.
    Last edited by fskylemcauliffe; 03-12-2009 at 04:46 AM. Reason: more discriptive title
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  2. 03-12-2009 #2
    HROAdmin26
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    Create shares on the NAS. That is the purpose of a NAS. I have seen some *really* cheap NAS's that don't support NFS and only allow CIFS shares (even though the NAS OS is *Linux*...*cough* Buffalo *cough*...

    If that is the case (the NAS only support CIFS shares), use the Samba client package to mount them on the RH machines.
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  3. 03-12-2009 #3
    fskylemcauliffe
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    the NAS does support NFS. So i make an NFS share. how do i make sure that it is mounted as /home/user when they log on from any box?
    Last edited by fskylemcauliffe; 03-12-2009 at 05:54 AM. Reason: misread previous reply
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  4. 03-12-2009 #4
    HROAdmin26
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    Any number of ways...two that come to mind...

    Write a logon script that mounts the NFS share.

    Or use the NFS automounter.

    Google will return many hits - like this Novell AppNote that talks about a login script for a SLED desktop.
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  5. 03-12-2009 #5
    fskylemcauliffe
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    I was under the impression that exporting NFS shares could only be done for shares that were local on the NFS server.

    If i mount a share on the NFS server and then export it to the clients home directory i run into errors.
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  6. 03-12-2009 #6
    HROAdmin26
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    Quote Originally Posted by fskylemcauliffe View Post
    I was under the impression that exporting NFS shares could only be done for shares that were local on the NFS server.

    If i mount a share on the NFS server and then export it to the clients home directory i run into errors.
    The *server* exporting NFS shares is the NAS. The RH machines are the clients mounting these shares.
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  7. 03-12-2009 #7
    fskylemcauliffe
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    Quote Originally Posted by HROAdmin26 View Post
    The *server* exporting NFS shares is the NAS. The RH machines are the clients mounting these shares.
    The NAS isn't a server though, it's an appliance. To export the shares created on the NAS i have set up an NFS server, i mount the NAS shares on the NFS server, then export them to the client.
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  8. 03-12-2009 #8
    HROAdmin26
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    Quote Originally Posted by fskylemcauliffe View Post
    The NAS isn't a server though, it's an appliance. To export the shares created on the NAS i have set up an NFS server, i mount the NAS shares on the NFS server, then export them to the client.
    You are confused. If I modify the /etc/exports file on my SuSE desktop machine and start the nfsserver service, it is now an NFS server with shares available for other machines to connect to. The application defines the server-client role - nothing else does.

    You can find more info on the client-server model.
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