NFS...again

[Roxoff]

In order to ensure that every machine has the same userids, uid, gid, and passwords, you need to set up yp (yellow pages).

What you say sounds great. I tried doing NIS, reading several tutorials and other references, but it was really hard to follow since apparently everything I read wanted to address all the issues of an elaborate system. Is there a "boiled down" tutorial somewhere that might make things easier to get started, that you know of?

Yeah - here's my quickie guide, you'll probly want to expand this as you go...

Make sure you have the yp (maybe called ypbind) and ypserv packages installed. ypserv is only needed on the You only needed on the server, dont install that on the clients.

Choose a yp domain name for <your_yp_domainname> in the following. Dont make this the same as your IP domain name.

Edit /etc/yp.conf on every client machine you want to use it on (including the server), put:

domain <your_yp_domainname> server <servername>

at the end.

On the server, edit /etc/ypserv.conf and add something like this:

# Host                     : Domain  : Map              : Security
#
192.168.2.               &#58; <your_yp_domainname>   &#58; passwd.byname    &#58; port
192.168.2.               &#58; <your_yp_domainname>   &#58; passwd.byuid     &#58; port
192.168.2.               &#58; <your_yp_domainname>   &#58; passwd           &#58; port
192.168.2.               &#58; <your_yp_domainname>   &#58; group            &#58; port

# Not everybody should see the shadow passwords, not secure, since
# under MSDOG everbody is root and can access ports < 1024 !!!
192.168.2.               &#58; <your_yp_domainname>   &#58; shadow.byname    &#58; port
192.168.2.               &#58; <your_yp_domainname>   &#58; passwd.adjunct.byname &#58; port

but use the first three parts of your own private IP address range.

On the server go to /var/yp, and edit the Makefile, take out the maps you dont want to export in 'all' category, mine looks like this:

all:  passwd group hosts rpc services netid protocols mail \
        # netgrp shadow publickey networks ethers bootparams printcap \
        # amd.home auto.master auto.home auto.local passwd.adjunct \
        # timezone locale netmasks

then do a 'make' in that directory.

Start the ypserv process with:

service ypserv start
service yppasswd start

Still on the server, start the yp client with:

service ypbind start

and test that it's all working with:

ypcat group
ypcat passwd

you should see the maps for groups and passwords.

Go to the client, and start up the ypbind service with:

service ypbind start

and test again. All should now be working. Use yppasswd on any machine to change a user password, and dont forget to add the various yp services to the runlevels of each machine.

[aimstolemylife]

..and a follow up..

I can mount perfectly fine from my Kubuntu box, but i get error -5000 on my OSX computer, I've googled that error and it seems its a permissions/server error

it lies!