Re: slightly-OT: centralized user management

From: Darryl Clarke (smartssa_at_gmail.com)
Date: 07/30/05

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    Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 13:23:22 -0400
To: "Roberto C. Sanchez" <roberto@familiasanchez.net>, debian-user@lists.debian.org

    On 7/29/05, Roberto C. Sanchez <roberto@familiasanchez.net> wrote:
    > Greetings,
    >
    > I currently have a small home network (1 server, 1 workstation, 1
    > laptop) with only two users. What I would like to do is to setup some
    > sort of centralized user authentication mechanism (NIS, LDAP, whatever)
    > with home directories mounted from the server. This is primarily since
    > I will be adding more machines and more users in the near future.
    >
    > I would like recommendations/experiences from the list on what is a good
    > approach and maybe some resources. The server already runs NFS, and I
    > have experience with a combined NIS/NFS setup for a computer lab I
    > formerly admined.
    >
    > One thing that is an absolute necessity is a sort of "roaming profile"
    > support similar to that which is available with certain Redmond-based
    > legacy operating systems. Specifically, logging into machine A will
    > cause a "copy" of my $HOME to be cached on the machine. Machine A is a
    > laptop and I unplug it from the network. I would like to be able to
    > login to the machine, make changes to my files/whatever and then have
    > them automagically sync up with the server next time machine A
    > reconnects to the network at home. This may obviate the need for NFS.
    > Additionally, it would be necessary for the login credentials to be
    > cached so that disconnected login would actually work. I am pretty sure
    > that this is possible, but I am not really sure what the best approach
    > is. Ideas and recommendations are welcome.
    >

    For all my permanently connected machines I use NIS for users and NFS for /home

    Simply doing that will propgate any user settings to any
    perma-connected machine that reads the same /home (assuming the same
    software is used, ex. if gnome 2.8 is used on one machine it will have
    issues with some of the things gnome 2.10 does with configurations)

    For my laptop I maintain local users, which is just me, and I use
    rsync in various methods to keep my files up to date. I treat my
    folders as if they were the equivalent to windows' offline, only no
    automagic syncronizing, because I don't want my entire /home on the
    laptop to be /home on the server (diskspace restrictions, other users
    that don't use the laptop, etc.) 

    -- 
~ Darryl  ~ smartssa@gmail.com
http://smartssa.com / http://darrylclarke.com
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