[NTLUG:Discuss] NFS ownership

[rp8034l]

On 08/20/12 17:59, Ralph Green wrote:
> Howdy,
>    I ran across something with a file server I setup this week that I
> need a little help with.  I setup a file server and all of the clients
> are going to be Linux machines.  So, I thought sharing the directory
> as an NFS mount made sense.

When using an NFS share, the classic solution is for all servers and 
clients to use the same user/group database. Typically YP, LDAP or a 
similar service is used to share the user/group database.

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You can get by if all the systems use the same users & groups and UID & 
GID numbers. (Yes, the UID & GID numbers are *more* *important* than the 
user & group names themselves...)

Drawbacks are:

1) Higher administrative effort; the system administrator is responsible 
for keeping the user/group databases updated & synchronized.
2) User confusion from lack of synchronization. For example, if user 
"joecool" on "clientsystem1" changes his password, it does NOT update 
the password for "joecool" on "clientsystem2".

- - -

The servers and clients do not all need to use the same O/S. I have been 
in at least one shop where YP was used to share the same user/group 
database to both Solaris & Linux systems.

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The other option is to disable user/group security for the NFS share. 
Under Linux, this is done with the "all_squash" option in the NFS share 
control file /etc/exports.

Drawbacks are:

1) Significantly reduced security.

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Hope that helps
---------------
Richard P