Re: NFS or an alternative?

2009-01-13 Thread Chuck Swiger

On Jan 12, 2009, at 9:56 PM, Jay Hall wrote:
I am in the process of redesigning my organization's network.  And,  
since we will be using mostly Macintosh OS X clients, I am  
considering using NFS.  However, I will need the ability to perform  
user/group authentication since users may not always log in from the  
same PC.


Essentially, each user has a home directory which only they, and  
possibly their secretary, needs to have access to.  And, we have  
directories which groups of people need access to.


Given the above requirements, Samba/CIFS is probably a better match  
for what you are doing that NFS would be.


From the reading I have done this evening, my understanding is NFSv4  
will meet all of these needs.  Is this correct?  And, is there a  
better way to accomplish this?


Note that Apple only ships NFSv3-aware software, and I'm not sure  
whether FreeBSD supports NFSv4 yet either.  There appears to be  
external work here:


  http://snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca/nfsv4/
  http://www.citi.umich.edu/projects/nfsv4/

...which you might look into.

Regards,
--
-Chuck

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Re: NFS or an alternative?

2009-01-13 Thread Michael Copeland



Chuck Swiger wrote:

On Jan 12, 2009, at 9:56 PM, Jay Hall wrote:
I am in the process of redesigning my organization's network.  And, 
since we will be using mostly Macintosh OS X clients, I am 
considering using NFS.  However, I will need the ability to perform 
user/group authentication since users may not always log in from the 
same PC.


Essentially, each user has a home directory which only they, and 
possibly their secretary, needs to have access to.  And, we have 
directories which groups of people need access to.


Given the above requirements, Samba/CIFS is probably a better match 
for what you are doing that NFS would be.
you could try webdav. apple's iDisk. i have used this on our corporate 
network for a while now, and allows mounting from any workstation.


From the reading I have done this evening, my understanding is NFSv4 
will meet all of these needs.  Is this correct?  And, is there a 
better way to accomplish this?


Note that Apple only ships NFSv3-aware software, and I'm not sure 
whether FreeBSD supports NFSv4 yet either.  There appears to be 
external work here:


  http://snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca/nfsv4/
  http://www.citi.umich.edu/projects/nfsv4/

...which you might look into.

Regards,

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Re: NFS or an alternative?

2009-01-12 Thread Bill Campbell
On Mon, Jan 12, 2009, Jay Hall wrote:
 I am in the process of redesigning my organization's network.  And,  
 since we will be using mostly Macintosh OS X clients, I am considering  
 using NFS.  However, I will need the ability to perform user/group  
 authentication since users may not always log in from the same PC.

 Essentially, each user has a home directory which only they, and  
 possibly their secretary, needs to have access to.  And, we have  
 directories which groups of people need access to.

 From the reading I have done this evening, my understanding is NFSv4  
 will meet all of these needs.  Is this correct?  And, is there a better 
 way to accomplish this?

NFS is only part of the problem.

We have done this using OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD clients using
openldap for authentication and the amd automounter to handle
home directories when there are multiple machines on which user's
home directories may be found.

When we create the openldap records, we map /home/username to
/homes/username to avoid conflict with client machine's local
user's directories.  We have one system with about 10,000 users
with multiple client machines handling mail delivery, pop, and
imap  to user's Maildir stores with the NFS mounted $HOME
directories which has been working without a hitch for several
years.  In this case the main systems /home directory is NFS
mounted to /homes on the client machine, specifying the tcp
protocol for maximum reliability.

Bill
-- 
INTERNET:   b...@celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
Voice:  (206) 236-1676  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820
Fax:(206) 232-9186

Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not
who makes its laws.  -- Mayer Amschel Rothschild
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