On 9/24/06, Andrew Robinson <awrobinson-ml@xxxxxxxxx> 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
