Advice managing home directories

[P Jones]

On 9/24/06, Andrew Robinson <awrobinson-ml at nc.rr.com> wrote:
> I'm looking for advice on managing my home directories on my home
> network. I have various flavors of mostly Fedora on various computers
> and sometimes on various partitions on the same computer. I'm trying to
> figure out the most convenient way to combine what's common between them
> with what's unique to each installation.
>
> It would be trivial if I could put all the common stuff in a single
> directory, like a "My Documents" in Windoze. I could NFS-mount from my
> main server and link that directory into each home directory.
>
> However, a number of applications seem to want put their configuration
> and data in dot directories directly in the home directory. jpilot and
> thunderbird are two examples. At this point I am identifying these
> applications and creating links. The more applications and the more
> installations, the more tedious and error-prone this approach becomes.
> Is there a better way?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Andrew Robinson

Andrew;

I can tell you what I do with my small linux/sometimes Windows
network, although I can't tell from your post exactly what you're
trying to do with "common stuff". It sounds like you're thinking about
things in a Windows kind of way (no offense).

Anyway, I have a server that I put all my home directories on and
share by NFS. I used to use NIS, but for the few numbers of users and
machines it is unnecessary (and all of my workstations run FC5). I
mount the home directories either using fstab entries or with
automount. I put a common docs directory in my home directory and
share it by NFS and SMB, and then link to it in each home directory. I
have a cron job that backs up the home directory on the server every
night. Since the home directries are on the server I can shut off the
workstations at night.

I use SME server (a RHEL based server distribution). I make sure that
users on the workstations have the same UID/GIDs as on the server
(very important for NFS). Although using NFS on SME isn't built in, it
can be done effectively in small networks that don't see a whole lot
of change. Most importantly GIDs are the same as FC.

But I'm still curious about your noting the location of the hidden
application directories in the home directory.

-P