Using a remote directory as a home directory

Harpalus · n00b Joined: 16 Oct 2002 Posts: 26

Hi all,

I am trying to setup the following system and I am having trouble deciding on an approach:

I have a server that contains my home directory (including documents and my config files). I would like to be able to use that that directory as my home directory from another system. i.e. I login into my computer at work and it mounts the home directory on my server for config files and documents.
Any ideas/suggestions. Security is an important consideration since all traffic will go through the open internet.

Thanks
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Never argue with an idiot, he will bring you down to his level and proceed to beat you with experience.

asph · Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2003 3:45 pm Post subject: why?

can i ask why?
I mean you can just copy it, and then syncronize the two home dirs.. like rsync'ing.
If you still want to do it, you can do it with NFS or SHHFS, just get some docs or search the forum for info, there are lots of tutorials.
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gentoo sex is updatedb; locate; talk; date; cd; strip; look; touch; finger; unzip; uptime; gawk; head; emerge --oneshot condom; mount; fsck; gasp; more; yes; yes; yes; more; umount; emerge -C condom; make clean; sleep

MrPyro · Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2003 3:48 pm Post subject:

The easy way to do this would be NFS

One question first though: when you say you want to have this home directory exported to whatever machine you are working on, are we talking just over a LAN or over the internet? Maybe it's just the way I've read your post that makes me think the server is at home and you want to get your home directory at work, but if this is the case, be warned that many people consider this a huge security risk, no matter what technique you use.

Anyway, NFS.

http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/NFS-HOWTO/

This is a remarkably good guide to configuring NFS, both server and client side. The only things this doesn't cover is

1) how to get the server and client daemons for gentoo

Harpalus · n00b Joined: 16 Oct 2002 Posts: 26

Thanks for the quick reply,

I have looked at NFS, shfs, lufs, samba, ssh, ipsec etc and all different combinations possible.
The key problem I am having trouble with is getting the home directory mounted at login and only mounting that user's directory. Most setups I have seen mount the entire /home tree. I figure if I only mount the home directory of the user logging in and do so over an encrypted channel with a strong authentification system it should be very secure. Any idea on how you go about mounting a users home directory at login using the infromation provided during the login.

Thanks
_________________
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Never argue with an idiot, he will bring you down to his level and proceed to beat you with experience.

asph · Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2003 8:04 am Post subject: another solution

another way to acomplish that would be autoFS or AMD automounter
after some reading, i think that'd be the easiest way

"autofs is a kernel-based automounter for Linux. It performs a job similar to amd but relies on a small stub of kernel code instead of pretending to be an NFS server. The result is simpler code, better reliability, and much faster operation in the common case (everything already mounted). Autofs 4 adds support for automounting trees of exported filesystems via /net."

http://freshmeat.net/projects/autofs/?topic_id=142
http://www.linuxhq.com/ldp/howto/Automount-1.html
http://www.fokus.gmd.de/linux/HOWTO/mini/pdf/Automount.pdf

good luck!
_________________
gentoo sex is updatedb; locate; talk; date; cd; strip; look; touch; finger; unzip; uptime; gawk; head; emerge --oneshot condom; mount; fsck; gasp; more; yes; yes; yes; more; umount; emerge -C condom; make clean; sleep