[Sheflug] Sheflug Meeting / AccessSpace NIS

[Alex Hudson <nospam [at] alexhudson.com>]

On 29 Mar 2001 17:56:04 +0100, Richard wrote:
> > You're welcome to hold Sheflug meetings at Access Space.
> >
> > Call me and let's get a plan together!
> 
> 
> too late we've already fixed up other plans.


Aww, that's a shame - Access Space would have been cool :-). Are you
able to tell us where we're going yet Richard? I have no fears it will
be near a pub. At least, if it's not, there'll be trouble :-)

James: Re NIS - erm, if you want my advice, drop it!!

Sorry, that's not very helpful. Having had to administer NFS servers I
think I can pretty safely say NFS on Linux sucks pretty bad, for the
most part. It's pretty crap - not just server-side, but client side too.
I would almost recommend Samba over NFS, which is kind of sad. NIS in
general is fairly sucky, and also a complete security nightmare, so make
sure your firewalling is good if you're on permanently. 

The way I've set things up in the past is this. Account access /
authentication over a network done over LDAP - you can get a PAM module
which plugs in, and then you just pop all the account information into
the LDAP server rather than /etc/passwd, or NIS. There is a standard
schema for POSIX accounts, and believe me, LDAP auth is _much_ nicer
than NIS. LDAP is also rocking technology - directories are where it's
at these days, and I'd probably also say it was more lightweight than
NIS auth.

Mounting remote home directories is a tough one. NFS is the main 'Linux
way', but as I said before, it sucks goat. If you find directories
disappearing, or if ls/du/df complains, etc., etc., ad nauseum, it's NFS
to blame, it's crap. Samba is a lot more stable, and if you have no
obvious objections to the noisy CIFS ("box a: hello, it's me, are you
free?", "box b: yes, I'm free, what do you want?", "box a: oh, nothing",
etc.) that might be the way to go. That's probably the way I would go.
Also brings the benefit of Windows integration, if that's of any use
(you never know ;). Sadly, the choice is pretty much going to be samba
vs. nfs - up to you.

LDAP/Samba would require some learning on your part, but then, you say
you're not really up to speed on NIS anyway, so you're going to have to
learn one or the other. Samba is a doddle to setup and get working, as
for NIS vs. LDAP - hmm, well, LDAP is probably marginally harder, but
it's a lot less scary than it looks. Plus, the daemons are called
'slurpd' and 'slapd' - instant UNIX guru points :)

I'd offer to help out, but I'm not in Sheffield all that often :(

Cheers,

Alex.
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