[plug] making linux desktops consistent

[Craig Ringer]

Mark O'Shea wrote:

> Mounting home directories over NFS has been a pretty standard way of doing
> things in the UNIX world.  There is no reason why you shouldn't do this
> with Linux (providing no NFS traffic can leave or enter your network, it's
> not the most secure thing around).

I've had good results with this. Typically I prefer terminal server 
setups instead, but NFS homedirs do work fine.

Depending on the programs being run, you'll need to make sure that only 
one copy of each user account is logged in at any one time, though. Some 
apps don't deal with this well.

> If you don't want to be copying config files like passwd, hosts etc.
> around then you could use NIS to store this config on the server and have
> the clients use them for configuration

Personally, I tend to prefer LDAP for this as it's _vastly_ more secure 
and IMHO easier to use. All you need on each client is pam_ldap and 
nss_ldap. The downside is that documentation on LDAP is a bit thin on 
the ground, so getting started can be tricky. I think it's been covered 
by a few magazines and things recently, though (LJ definitely had an 
article on it a while ago). Try the PLUG archives, too.

I actually gave up on NIS in frustration and tried LDAP auth instead - 
with much success. If you use TLS, it's quite secure as well.

Craig Ringer