[K12OSN] Tell me why this doesn't work

[Henry Burroughs]

David,

I have no idea how well the XServe will serve up home directories,
however you might look into doing software raid/lvm, especially if the
server is only going to handle home shares (That can be another topic). 
Setting up NFS is pretty easy.

1: Setup how you want /home to be on the Xserve (directory off of the /
partition, its own drive, or raided/LMVed drive).

2: I am not going to delve into firewall issues at the moment, so I am
assuming you aren't filtering inbound connections on this XServe. 

3: Add an entry to /etc/exports like:

/home ???.???.???.???(sync,rw)

where ???.???.???.??? is either the ip address or the hostname of the
client(s) you wish to export to.  Since you are exporting to the LTSP
server, then you should only have to add one entry.... make sure though
the hostname can be resolved (ie: ping hostname)!!!  For security
purposes, the root account on the LTSP server will not have full access
to the NFS share... to get that add ",no_root_squash" after "rw".

4: Restart/start nfs on the server.... perform "service nfs start" if
starting the nfs server cold, and "service nfs reload" to reload the
changes from /etc/exports if you already run nfs.

5: Make NFS startup default.  If you don't have nfs starting up at boot,
just run "chkconfig nfs on" and that should activate the appropriate
runlevels.

----Server config done!

The "client" is actually the LTSP server (or any other workstations you
are going to export to).  This end is really easy.

1: Make sure the /home directory on the "client" is empty... if it isn't
and you are planning to move the files to the new NFS home, just "mv
home home.old" and make a new home directory (don't forget about copying
the old user dirs later if applicable!)

2: Now run "mount ???.???.???.???:/home /home" where ???.???... is the
ip address or hostname of the NFS SERVER.

Now if this doesn't work, you should make sure you
started/restarted/reloaded the NFS server on the fileserver, and then
make sure anything like a firewall on that system (or the client) is
blocking... you could test by running "service iptables stop" or
"service ipchains stop" on both the server and client to temporarily
remove firewalling... but only do this if your systems are protected
internally...  use caution and discretion if they are accessible from
the net either directly or via port forwarding.

3: If 2 works, then add this to /etc/fstab:

"???.???.???.???:/home	/home	nfs	rw,hard,intr 0 0" and that should work.

4: Unmount your temporarily mounted /home "umount /home" and just run
"mount /home" and that will get you up to full functionality.


----End client config

Check out http://nfs.sourceforge.net/nfs-howto/  if you need any more 
information or if  I missed something (rolling off the top of my head).

Good luck! Let me know if you have any problems!


On a side note, I'm doing something cool with autofs... I will probably
have home directories off of 3 systems (mine,fileserver, and TS).. so I
am setting it up that no matter what system your user directory is on,
it will always be available under /home...

-- 
Henry Burroughs
Technology Director
Hilton Head Preparatory School
www.hhprep.org
hburroughs at hhprep.org


David Trask wrote:
>I actually have a dual processor Xserve with 512 mb RAM and a couple
>HD's....more on the way.  any idea how well the Xserve will serve LTSP
>homes via NFS?  Do you have a how-to for setting this up?
>
>David N. Trask
>Technology Teacher/Coordinator
>Vassalboro Community School
>dtrask at vcs.u52.k12.me.us
>(207)923-3100