Linux and desktops on isolated LAN

[me-5yx05kfkO/aqeI1yJSURBw at public.gmane.org (Matthew Gillen)]

Scott Ehrlich wrote:
> I want to set up Samba on the Enterprise 5 box to permit the XP desktops
> to centrally authenticate to the server as a Windows domain controller,
> and thus don't have to worry about local accounts on the desktops.
> ...
> For linux to linux (Enterprise to CentOS), what is the best way to
> establish user home directories that, when a user sits at a workstation
> and boots into Linux, no matter what desktop they sit at, they log into
> their home directory, even if they end up using multiple workstations to
> get their job done.

The way I've done this in the past is to have the file server box serve both
NIS and Samba (as a domain controller).  With NIS, it's really easy to set up
the automounter to mount home directories on the clients.  With Samba, you
have to have a group policy that does remapping on login so that the "home"
directory they get in linux becomes their "My Documents" directory in windows.

You still have two user databases though (ie adding a user means adding them
to the unix/nis config, then also to the samba config).  You can actually get
away with a single user data base if you use LDAP: have your file server be a
slapd server, and configure the linux clients to authenticate against it, and
set up samba to authenticated against it.  It was a royal pain last time I
tried this though...

> Finally, for now, what is the best way to parse data and user accounts
> to the desktops to share data preservation for backups?  As present, we
> don't have tape or raid, and they will take time to arrive.  So for now,
> the desktops will act as our backup media, too.   The plan will be to
> select a handful of user accounts and some centralized data and push a
> copy out to one desktop, and repeat for another desktop.

Not sure what you're talking about here.  If all user data resides on the file
server (home directories), what is on the desktops that needs to be backed up?

HTH,
Matt

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.