home folder via network (ssh)

[LuckyMe]

Hi,

not sure if this is the correct place, but as I consider myself still as a newbie to Linux I post it in here.

Got a Feisty server up and running, with OpenLDAP, Samba Domain and file share for my Windows machines. And also the Linux clients can authenticate versus the LDAP. So far so good.

Now I would like to have the users home folder to be located on the server. I have a folder there /data/home/<username> which is already in use for Windows - shared via Samba. And I would like to use the same folder for the users home folder under the Linux clients. No worries I have sorted out the above mentioned folders into subfolders for Windows and Linux and Desktop, etc.

How to I get the home folder on a Linux machine pointed to a network location, preferably via SSH?
I have tried with sshfs, receive a warning that the location I am mapping to is not empty (cause the login bash scripts are in the users home folder already) and if I set a flag to ignore this then it does not work either.

Do I map the home folder of the user that is logging in only - after user authentication? Or do I map the folder containing all the home folders of all users before login? Either way I do not know how?

Any hint is highly appreciated.

Cheers
... LuckyMe

[LuckyMe]

How far would I get with the use of fuse and sshfs in the fstab? Something like this?

sshfs#dummyuser@monolith:/data/home /data/home/ fuse    defaults,auto    0 0

As I am not sure how FUSE works I am concerned that the dummyuser would be used for permission check on the remote drive and therefore the user would not be able to access their actually owned home folder?! Also I am not sure about the options default and auto or noauto, etc.

Any ideas?

Thanks
... LuckyMe

[LuckyMe]

Okay, if I am not wrong I can use certificates instead of username and password. But the certificate is supposed to be in the .ssh folder of the current user. Which user is used for fstab?

Cheers
... LuckyMe

[LuckyMe]

Can you please add entry in /ete/passwd

Sorry, but I am not quite sure what you mean by that?
I can change the home folder location in the passwd file, that is true, but I also have to make it available. And the discussion is how to do that?!

Beside that as I am using LDAP the passwd file is irrelevant in my case anyhow.


Thanks
... LuckyMe

[IsaacKuo]

I haven't played with sshfs yet, so I can't really help. I know how to do this via nfs, but I can understand if you don't want to use the comparatively insecure nfs method.

With nfs at least, it's most straightforward to share the entire /home folder rather than mounting individual users's directories seperately.

[LuckyMe]

I haven't played with sshfs yet, so I can't really help. I know how to do this via nfs, but I can understand if you don't want to use the comparatively insecure nfs method.

With nfs at least, it's most straightforward to share the entire /home folder rather than mounting individual users's directories seperately.

Thanks IsaacKuo,

with sshfs you can also mount the whole /home folder, but my first tests yesterday where not very successful. I used the user root in the fstab file to mount the whole home folder and that did result in a user access to the individual users home folder as a root user, which is not really what I want. So now I am elaborating on how to continue?! Do I need (which I really don't want) to have one line for each user in the fstab file?

NFS is not an option, even so it is straight forward as you say.

But maybe there are other options that I am not aware of as yet?

Thanks
... LuckyMe