newbie nfs question

So I want to put several linux computers together on a network so that a user on can log into any machine with the same username and password, but I don't want to have to add each user on every machine...that's way too much work.

I figure I need to use nfs to do this, but I don't have the slightest idea on how to do this.

can anyone help me do this? (or at least give me a shove in the right direction)

It should be noted that I am only new to linux networking, not linux in general so you don't have to dumb down your replies with gui stuff...I want to do it from the terminal.

You are basically going to want to share the uers home directories so they are accesible on different computers throughout your network. The link below should "nudge" you into the right direction. Im not positive on how to go about starting this for your because i use LTSP and diskless workstations, so everything is ran off of a central server. This link might help.


http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...twork-nfs.html

It won't be enough to have a centralized /home, since each user will still need to have an account registered with each machine (/etc/passwd and whatnot). What you may want is thin clients, doing a network boot. Have a look here and see if that sounds about right.

I most definitely don't want thin clients. They would not work in this situation. is there any way to just share individual files in etc that have to do with users?

I've never done it myself, but the things you're looking for is NIS (Network Information Service). It allows multiple machines to use the same login IDs and passwords.

Alternatives are LDAP/OpenLDAP and kerberos.