[K12OSN] Linux client file shareing protocols

[Jeff Kinz]

On Wed, Aug 11, 2004 at 02:52:42PM -0700, Jamie wrote:
> We're setting up some Fedora core 2 stand alone clients for teachers to 
> use on their desktops. They all have home directories on one of our 
> file servers. I really hate to share these via NFS with the security 
> concerns of NFS (exporting the /data/staff/ directory to our entire 
> subnet where we could get a malicious user switching UIDs to delete 
> other peoples files etc).

I'm not sure I get the problem.
The teachers directories should be mounted only to the machines they
login on, no matter what/where it is.

If your accounts are properly secured, no one should be switching user
IDs at anytime except root.  In a networked environment you should make
sure the "Stand-alone clients" ?  (These have hard drives ? ) are
administred via NIS.

Using NIS/YP and NFS you shouldn't have any problems of the nature you
describe.   Securely NFS auto-mounting a directory full of home directories
has been done at least since the late 80's.

> 
> So i am wondering how you guys do it? Is this a legitimate security 
> concern? Could i somehow auto-mount the users volumes via smb? I would 
> like to not have the users home folder local, but rather located on the 
> server.
> 

-- 
Linux/Open Source.  Now all your base belongs to you, for free.
============================================================
Idealism:  "Realism applied over a longer time period"

Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA.