need help with NFS and user authentication

[Craig White]

On Sat, 2009-02-28 at 16:38 -0700, Craig White wrote:
> On Sat, 2009-02-28 at 16:21 -0700, Alex Dean wrote: 
> > I have set up an Ubuntu file server on my home network.  I have 2 OSX  
> > workstations (mine and my wife's), and an Ubuntu laptop.  We each have  
> > an account on each computer.  I'm trying to figure out how to allow my  
> > user account on any computer to mount my home directory on the file  
> > server, and to allow my wife's account on any computer mount her home  
> > directory on the file server.
> > 
> > I don't want to move our home directories entirely onto the  
> > fileserver.  Primarily we want to continue using the local machines as  
> > we always have.  We just want to add the ability to easily store files  
> > on the network and have them accessible from any other machine.
> > 
> > I have had no problems creating exports on the file server, and I've  
> > had no problems mounting those exports from the client machines.  The  
> > problems thusfar have been uid mismatches.  I could probably change  
> > uids everywhere so they all match on all machines, but this seems 1.  
> > klunky and 2. really insecure.
> > 
> > I think there are ways to solve this kind of problem with Kerberos or  
> > LDAP, but those are technologies I know very little about.  If someone  
> > could point me in the right direction, I'd really appreciate it.  How  
> > would you solve this problem?  I'm happy to research and learn what I  
> > need to learn, but I find I'm having a hard time even getting started.
> ----
> I like LDAP but most would probably consider this overkill for a home
> network.
> 
> Apple starts numbering uid's at 500 (first user) and increments each new
> user from there. Ubuntu starts numbering users at 1000.
> 
> The following link explains how you can change the uid #'s on the Macs
> to conform - this solved my particular problem on a network where some
> Macintosh users saving files on a Windows server would cause issues but
> the same principal applies. There are instructions for both Tiger and
> Leopard.
> 
> http://www.makemacwork.com/office-2004-wont-save-to-server.htm
----
I should point out that my testing of NFS on Tiger were good until the
user actually tried to use NFS via the Macintosh GUI. There obviously is
a latency when copying/moving files via the Finder through NFS mounts
that didn't exist when simply using the terminal application and I found
that compiling and using 'Netatalk' (AFP over TCP) was a much better
solution for the Mac users. Perhaps Apple has fixed the problem in
Leopard but I would doubt it.

I do have another network where the users all have 'home' directories
which come from Netatalk automounts of a Linux server and authentication
(and obviously the uid's) are handled by LDAP but you really have to
want to do that as it wasn't simple to set up.

Craig