[K12OSN] OS X with Linux or Windows Home Folders?

[Jim Kronebusch]

On Thu, 20 Sep 2007 13:40:52 -0400, Shane Sammons wrote
> Maybe someone here would know. I have search Google and I keep getting
> instructions on NFS shares, Samba, etc. Yet, not one has been setting up and
> moving user home folder in OS X Workgroup Manager from local AFP shares to
> an SMB or NFS share.
> 
> I created a basic Windows share and entered smb:\\192.168.168.6\students
> with username in both of its fields and that didn't work. I then tried the
> username:password at Workgroup/servername/share format. Still account were made
> locally.
> 
> I am not going to setup an Ubuntu Server and see if I can do it with NFS
> shares. However, again no luck with finding documentation on it. I have
> found notes of issues with the file locking of 10.3 systems which we use.
> 
> Would anyone here know and be a good resource for this or perhaps could
> direct me to some documentation?
> 
> Thanks,
> Shane Sammons

Well this isn't exactly for what you want to do, but maybe it will give you a clue as to
what you need to do.  Here is a howto I posted a few years back on getting OSX to work
with LDAP and NFS home's.  http://www.1-cs.com/osxldap.html

Section 3 and 4 might have what you need.  If your setup is currently using the local
/home folder you could use these instructions to mount /home from a nfs server on
startup to your local /home server (if your user data is stored in a different location
by default such as Users, you should be able to change the instructions to use that
location).  Warning, you can hose a system pretty quick in NetInfo Manager.  Have a
backup :-)

One other thing I had a problem with.  Mac doesn't use a file extension by default and
store data about the file in a bazillion .Apple* whatever files.  For some reason this
broke for me when using NFS.  All files needed an extension or they just showed up with
a terminal icon and users didn't know how to open them.  I think NFS breaks apples
communication with the sill .Apple crap, where AFP and SMB didn't.  Maybe I was one of
the lucky ones to get this problem and things will be better for you.  Fix, make users
add extensions to all their files (yeah right).

If you want to use samba, you may be able to change the vfstype to smb.

Hope this helps.
Jim

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