On 16/05/11 05:25, Martin Bähr wrote: > On Thu, May 05, 2011 at 05:38:31PM +0100, Tony Travis wrote: >> The FHS seems to be focussed on 'stand-alone' machines that may or may >> not mount some network filesystems as a client, but it does not state >> how filesystems should be 'exported' (or shared) by network servers or >> by 'servents' (i.e. machines that can be both clients and servers). >> >> For example, the FHS states that 'home' directories should be within: >> >> /home >> >> This directory could, of course, be mounted from an NFS server, but it >> is more flexible to use it as an automount point instead. In the case of >> BSD and SunOS/Solaris, 'exported' home directories on a server (or >> servent) are typically sub-directories of: >> >> /export/home > > i suppose /srv can be used for this purpose.
Hi, Martin. Yes, it can but the widely adopted convention for NFS automounted home directories is to use /export/home. However, if using /srv for this was to become part of FHS then it may be more widely adopted. An important aspect is that the server mounts /srv/home as a client e.g.: hostname:/srv/home -> /home/hostname Then all the hosts in the network can automount /home/hostname >> All machines, including an NFS servent exporting its own 'home' folder, >> use the same automount map where the hostname is now part of the path to >> the user's home directory: >> >> host1:/export/home/user1 -> host2:/home/host1/user1 >> host2:/export/home/user2 -> host1:/home/host2/user2 >> >> For example, the home directory of user1 on any host would then be: >> >> /home/host1/user1 >> >> Using the automounter, 'home' directories are now 'exported' from one >> host and 'follow' users as they login on different hosts in a network. >> >> FHS 3.0 could incorporate this widely adopted scheme for using network >> filesystems more transparently on NFS servers, clients and servents. > > and thus force everyone to use it? i think the FHS is mostly concerned > with issues that relates to the interaction among applications. things > that applications can expect, and that distributors should follow to > meet those expectations. i can't think of any application that would > break because nfs server directories are in a non-standard location (but > my experience on this is quite limited so there may be some). this is > all a configuration issue anyways. One of the issues I faced when migrating from SunOS/Solaris to Linux was the convention in many distributions to create home directories as: /home/username Instead of: /home/hostname/username This, of course, is OK for stand-alone machines. However, I posted this message here in order to address the issue of how to automount /home in a networked environment in the light of a widely adopted convention of: hostname:/export/home -> /home/hostname I accept that /srv could be used instead of /export despite the fact that /export is widely used at present. However, I think that /home is often assumed to be a directory when it can, in fact, be an automount point. This leads to problems if packages or installation scripts attempt to rename or create directories in /home. For example: /home/db # used by Bio-Linux to store shared databases On our systems, I have to create a host alias "db" for "bobcat" in the automount map so that this path is accessible on all hosts: bobcat:/export/db -> /home/db There are numerous ways this problem can be solved, of course, and I want us to discuss if and how well-known solutions can be incorporated into the FHS. As I said in my previous message, the FHS seems to be focussed on stand-alone machines. I think it would be useful to broaden it out to include some well-known ways of exporting/sharing network filesystems. Bye, Tony. _______________________________________________ fhs-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.linux-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/fhs-discuss
