[NTLUG:Discuss] Need advice for mirroring home directories

[Richard Geoffrion]

Lance Simmons wrote:

>I've been using NFS on my wireless network at home so that my wife and
>kids can have access to their /home directories <snip> ...[NFS hangs} for 30 seconds up to a couple of minutes at a time) <snip> 
>
>I wonder if it would be better to switch over to mirroring their /home
>directories on the different machines.  Does anyone have any advice for
>how to do that?  Since not all the machines are on at the same time, it
>seems like it would be hard to keep things reliably synchronized.
>
>  
>
I have seen issues where my NFS mounting takes a seriously long time.  
Once it's mounted, all is well.  My gut feeling tells me that you should 
investigate whether or not you are losing your mounts...which....causes 
the clients to have to go re-mount the home directories.

As far as syncing the $homes with another place -- to what end?  What 
would you be trying to accomplish?  Backup?  If it's backup, then let 
them use the 'non-pausing' media for their $home and implement rsync or 
dirvish(glorified rsync) for backups.

If it's NOT for backups, then I'm clueless as to the use. ohohooh.... 
mirrored so that they can move from machine to machine... right....  
um..... I would still go after the NFS issue and try to solve that 
otherwise...you could institute a login script of sorts.  (rambling 
removed - new concise statement to follow)  Um..I don't know where to 
tell you to start looking for login scripts...it is just where I'd start 
looking.

-- 
rtcg