I asked: > Are these shares going to be the users home directories? (If so, there > could be problems with some programs that assume the home directory > "looks" like a Unix home directory). akonstam@xxxxxxxxxxx replied: > The home directory will be a subshare on \\tucc-tiger\users > let us say. And yes if the directoties reside on a widows server there > will have to be diectories that Linux can deal with. May I recommend that you run find ~ -type l -ls for a user who has set up and run all the software that your users will be expected to use? Software that expects to create symlinks in the users' home directories will probably be the biggest problem. Last I checked, SMB mounting directories from a Windows server will mean you *can't* create symlinks in those directories. I'm not sure either SMB or NTFS support the concept of symlinks. But it's been a while since I tried... And I had asked: > What is exporting these shares? What sort of filesystem does it have? > Can you rely on its idea of security? akonstam@xxxxxxxxxxx told me: > The Windows server can handle the security. Right: there's another well understood solution to this. Mount the filesystem under /home, and set users home directories to be something like /home/tucc-tiger/username. The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) says > On small systems, each user's directory is typically one of the many > subdirectories of /home such as /home/smith, /home/torvalds, > /home/operator, etc. On large systems (especially when the /home > directories are shared amongst many hosts using NFS) it is useful to > subdivide user home directories. Subdivision may be accomplished by > using subdirectories such as /home/staff, /home/guests, > /home/students, etc. (http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#FTN.AEN808) This is common in universities: any software that can't cope with it is Officially Broken. In particular, if you have the situation where many students telnet [1] or ssh into a central server, one filesystem per user means you can have hundreds of NFS or SMB mounts at once. That becomes impractical, especially with NFS variants that need one low port (<1024) per mount. James. [1] This sort of usage is increasingly historical: when I arrived at university (1994), the students who were there expected to telnet into one of many central Unix servers. When I left, the freshers hadn't a clue about it. And in those days, no-one had heard of SSH. -- James Wilkinson | John's Inverse Law of Physics: Exeter Devon UK | You do Physics -- you get inverted. E-mail address: james | @westexe.demon.co.uk |
