Rajeev Rao proclaimed:
> Well, I solved this by, deleting all client users and changing the search
> order in nsswitch.conf.
Oh yes. I totally forgot about nsswitch.conf.
> I have a few questions. There have been a couple queries on /misc, autofs on
> the list. I can't understand the jargon.
> 1) What is autofs actually used for?
> 2) What is automount for
autofs and automounters are software for automatically mouting remote
(NFS) exports on a local machine AND (and this is important) unmounting
the mounts when they are no longer needed.
Why do we need an automounter? If you did not have an automounter,
you'd mount /u/foo, /u/bar etc upon bootup from /etc/fstab. Any unix
machines can only have a fixed number of mount points active at any
time. Let us say, for example's sake, that this number is 32. If you
had 50 users in NIS, you will not be able mount all 50 home directories
through /etc/fstab. If you expect only 10 NIS users to be logged in at
any moment, automounting the home directories will ensure that you do
not reach the 32 simultaneous mount points limit. Now do you understand
why I stressed that automounter also unmounts NFS mount points when they
are no longer needed?
> 3) What is an active mountpoint
Configured mount points refers to all the mount points that you have
mentioned in the various auto.* files. Active mount points are that
sub-set of configured mount points that are currently still mounted (and
have not been unmounted by automounter).
> 4) Why -nosuid in auto.master
So that root does not have her draconian permissions in a directory
mounted off of NFS. Let us assume that /u/ is where you are mounting
all user home directories. By specifying -nosuid in the maps, you are
ensuring that root on some client machine will not be able to overwrite
files under /u, for example /u/rajeev.
> 5) Even with those fh_verify, errors, the users are able to logon and read
> and write to their home directories. Even X-windows works. Where exactly
> will a problem crop up?
Since I don't know what those fh_verify errors were in the first place -
I don't know.
> 6) Every Documentation on NIS and NFS that we have come across (including
> the so called brilliant howtos), do not mention auto.master, autofs or any
> other such thing. What's worse, is that no documentation links nfs and nis
> together, which is the core of all our problems. Can you suggest a decent
> source which does! B.T.W to all other aspirant networkers/sysads, I would
> certainly not suggest something as vague as those howtos, for reading!!
Rajeev, since you've learnt so much from this experience, why don't you
write it all up as a HOWTO and submit it to the Linux Documentation
Project? In fact, a "Small Office Networking HOWTO" would be most
helpful.
I've not come across a single source or even multiple sources that have
the kind of information that we've exchanged over this thread. This is
probably because this sort of information is the kind of thing that
comes with experience. If I did not work at Netscape (and didn't have
the hacker mind set to begin with ;-), I'd never have found this info
out.
Thaths
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