On 6/7/2005 at 19:09 Tony Shadwick wrote:
I have a question of theory that has been bugging me that I thought I
would throw at the list.
Presume this configuration: a typical small to medium sized company,
we'll
say 25 workstations, all running some version of *nix, for sanity
we'll
presume all FreeBSD, but I see no reason some couldn't be linux or
osx.
I could set up centralized authentication via NIS or LDAP without too
much
difficulty. I'm aware of the differences in password schema that must
be
overcome, but I've learned to deal with this. So now I can go
workstation
to workstation and log in, no problem.
NFS can be set up equally well. No issues. In the scenario with
desktop
machines, this quite simply isn't a problem so long as you are okay
with
working on everything across the network. Something about that bugs
me
though...really. You wind up eating up network resources constantly.
:\
Anyway, that's a tangent to the real kicker.
Laptops.
They don't stay put! (well duh)
Okay, so the user can log in to the "domain" if you will when in the
office, and sure, NFS will automount, but what happens when the user
leaves the office? I've done some quick searching on "roaming
profiles"
(I actually googled 'linux roaming profiles' with little success).
So how should one play this out? I personally am on a Powerbook, and
have
intentionally set up local user auth. I open and close my laptop to
sleep
it, leave a network, open it and next thing you know you're on a new
network. Now, the fact that you generally only have 1 user per laptop
makes this "kind of" okay, but your home directory is no longer
centralized, you home directory doesn't get backed up, and now I'm
dealing
with a user that really isn't auth'ing against the domain, and having
to
alot permissions for such user, and having to manage local machine
uid's
and gid's. Ugh!
You see the cluttered path my mind is wandering down here?
Is there already a solution to this, or is it still someone one must
hack
for themselves?
This is a hard question.
Coda and AFS (Andrew's file system) both attempt to solve the home dir
problem. They are both known to be a headache, and not always stable.
(though some very large installations use AFS, so it must work once
you sacrifice the right breed of goat or whatever it is you have to do)
They are worth investigating.
Consider connecting laptops via VPN, even when in the office. Only a
fool would have a laptop these days without wireless networking, and
wireless isn't secure by default. A VPN is just one solution, but
since it solves the out of office issue (so long as you have network
connectivity somewhere, which isn't a given) so it might be the best
way to go. Or maybe not, like I said, consider it.
I don't know how to solve the login problem.
If your company has money (with only 25 workstations this is unlikely)
you should hire a couple developers to work on a solution. Perhaps
you can find a project that is working on parts of this and donate
money? I don't know of any, but if you find them.
