Using Networked Home Directories with Mac OS X?

trouser asks: "I work in a small office using Macs running Mac OS X and PCs running Linux (Debian). There's no problem sharing files between the machines using Samba, Netatalk, and FTP. However, we want to set the Macs up so that at login they mount home directories from one of the Linux boxes so that we get the same home directory no matter which machine we login on. I've read a little about doing this using NetInfo but I gather with LDAP being included with Jaguar that there might be other options now. Any clues?"

LDAP Infos/MacOS X

[Anonymous Coward]

The MacOS X Server Guide from Apple answers some of you questions...

http://a320.g.akamai.net/7/320/51/1739d12419ef7c /w ww.apple.com/server/pdfs/Mac_OS_X_Server_v10.2.pdf

LDAP = Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

Re:NFS?

[ivan256]

I already have "mount magrathea:/huge/mp3 ~/Desktop/mp3" run when I log in to my 10.2 box. The server is Linux 2.4.17 based. What does Suse do to their kernel that is causing your problem? From what I can see the NFS client implementation in 10.2 works perfectly well.

Server

[Johnny Mnemonic]

While you don't need Mac OS X Server to do this, the same resources will apply. I would recommend the OS X Server mailing list [apple.com], or the X Server Admin Guide [akamai.net]. Both are good sources of info for doing just this kind of thing.

Also take a look at some non-Apple resources: AFP548.com [afp548.com] is consistently the most current, and has a question and answer bulletin board; there's also StepWise [stepwise.com], an oldie but goodie.

Hope that helps, and good luck.

amd automounter of NFS filesystems

[Ruzty]

I believe you are looking for 'amd'. It's an automounter for NFS filesystems. It is included on my 10.2 install, not sure about 10.1.5. I would think if you set up /Users/* for automounting you'ls be all set.

-Rusty

Apple Training

[plsuh]

Warning: Shameless Plug! :-)

Apple provides for-fee technical training that covers this and other very useful topics. The courses are generally a week long and involve instructor-led, hands-on training in setting up a network with Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server. IMNSH (and quite biased 'cause I helped write it! :-) O, the training is good stuff, meaty and chock full of technical information. Almost everyone who goes through these courses says something like, "Wow, that's a lot of good, useful information."

We're working on the revisions for Jaguar right now, and expect to go live with the first course deliveries in a month or so. Go to the Apple Training website [apple.com] for more information.

--Paul

Paul Suh
Curriculum Developer
Apple Technical Training
(Help me keep my job! Buy training from Apple! :-)

Would be nice, yes

[El Gato Loco]

macosxlabs.org [macosxlabs.org] is a good site to visit. Several universities are trying this, including the one I work at.

We've got a lab with both XP Pro and OS X computers who have their home directories mounting of a network attached storage device. Account info is pulled from a Samba server for the PCs and an NIS server for the Macs. Marcel Bresink has a nice utility for placing the NFS mount info into Netinfo's database with the right syntax. He also has thorough documentation [bresink.de] on getting Mac OS X to speak to an NIS server.

One thing I'd like to see is better documentation for OS X Server 10.2. OS X Server 10.2 is supposed to be do "NFS resharing over AFP" making it easier to have home directories stored on an NAS device. That gets NFS mounted to the OS X Server which looks at that as the home directory location for all the users. That mountpoint then gets shared to users over AFP. It has not been successful and the nice thick server admin guide isn't very clear on the resharing feature except to say that it is there.

It is possible and has been done

[rtm1]

There is a forum thread here [macobserver.com] that covers much of the material your are looking for, and the people involved would probably be happy to help you out.

It's always nice to talk to people who have done it before..

OpenLDAP and 10.2

[fordgj]

Yes, OS X 10.2 should be able to automount an NFS volume from a linux box, deriving the required information from the an LDAP database. Yet, this isn't that easy. Over the last two weeks, my work has been attempting to do a similart task with a combination of Jaguar server and Linux. Basically, the issue of where your home directory is doesn't matter a whole lot. The problem is working with LDAP. Our issue has lied in getting the LDAP database setup wioth the proper base such that the fields exist. The LDAP server MUST accomidate all the fields. This includes regular Posix account information, plus special Apple fields such as MCX flags,etc. If you examine the apple.schema file that comes with 10.2 (/etc/openldap/schema/apple.schema), you will see all of these. The 10.2 documentation is good and bad, it says some stuff about this and leaves out a lot. Another problem is the generation of all of this information. I believe that it isn't all regular ASCII (mainly MCX flags). If you already have a netinfo database under Jaguard server, you can migrate the output from slapcat. The problem is, this doesn't work under the client verion, though this may be a matter of configuring the ldap.conf file properly. As another clue, check out the Unix RFC preset in the LDAPv3 section of the 10.2 Directory Access utility. This has additional information regarding mappings. In essence, we have yet to be able to maintain an OpenLDAP directory under linux that could authenticate OS X. However turning on slapd under 10.2 did work with LDAP authentication. It's all a matter of having a database with the proper fields and information. I'll post more as I remember more of the details, my notes are all at work.

Re:LDAP/NFS/Samba? Let's get simple.

[trouser]

Actually Samba is installed with Jaguar so you are using it. If you look in the Sharing panel in System Prefs on your Mac you'll find a new option called 'Windows File Sharing'. If you enable it Samba will start and your NT system should be able to see your Mac. Of course you also need to have file sharing turned on for the NT system, and you'll need to see a network workgroup name and select at least one directory on the NT system to be shared on the network. I don't recall how it's done but the Network settings in the Control Panel would be a good place to start. Also, you should set the Mac SMB workgroup name to match the workgroup name you use on the NT machine. This is set using the Directory Access utility in /Applications/Utilites. Select the SMB service on the Services tab and click 'Configure'. You'll be prompted for a workgroup name and a WINS server address. For the setup you describe you can leave the WINS address blank. Now if you select 'Connect to Server' from the Finder's 'Go' menu you should see the NT machine listed. Since upgrading to Jaguar my Mac lists all the Linux SMB and AFP shares and all the Macs on the network. I haven't tried it with a Windows machine yet but I'd reckon it would work as described.

OS X automount

[Morth]

If you simply want to automount NFS/smb/afp
enter this in the /mounts/ directory in NetInfo:

[kaninen:~] morth% nidump -r /mounts .
{
"name" = ( "mounts" );
CHILDREN = (
{
"vfstype" = ( "nfs" );
"name" = ( "moroten:/" );
"opts" = ( "net", "resvport", "rw" );
},
{
"vfstype" = ( "nfs" );
"name" = ( "moroten:/home" );
"opts" = ( "rw", "resvport", "net" );
},
(etc)
}

You might want to add the hosts in /machines/

These mounts will appear as /Network/Servers/moroten/
and /Network/Servers/moroten/home
The "net" entry in opts is very important. automount ignores any entry without it.