Questions[home-directory](server)

I have recently setup Ubuntu ldap client authentication on karmic and lucid desktop clients and the ldap server is running on an 10.04 LTS server and this is the link I followed for client setup and probably this also works for 11.04. I could able to login to clients with the ldap user accounts and also, on the clients I used an entry session required pam_mkhomedir.so umask=0022 skel=/etc/skel in pam.d/common-session to automatically create the home directory on client computers when the user logs in for the first time. I guess there would be a way to synchronize the home directory from Client to Server and vice-versa so that users have their documents on which ever the client they login to.

I have the below task left to be done:

1. Synchronize the home directories between client and server(just like roaming profile in windows).

I tried with autofs but the problem is with local user accounts(admin, guest) on client computers which also gets synchronized or overwritten(which I don't want them to get mounted) when I place the entry * server:/ldaphome/& in /etc/auto.home to get the ldap user's home directory synchronized(included the entry /home /etc/autofs.home in /etc/autofs.master).

Anybody has any trick to do this or with any other way so that I can login to clients with both ldap and local user credentials having the home directory synchronized for ldap users?. I know many masters are here, how one would do this with their style?.

Update:1

I tried autofs automounting of different directory(ldaphome) other than home on a client and I tried to link the ldaphome/$USER and home/$USER on the same client so that when the ldaphome on server mounts ldaphome on client, user's home directory home/$USER will be synced because of symlink. So I edited /etc/profile.d/custom.sh file and placed ln -sf "/ldaphome/$USER" "/home/$USER" to link those directories at the login. I realized symlinks doesn't work as expected for directory as it's creating a link name under /home/$USER/$USER.

DROPPED THIS SYMLINK METHOD!

Update:2

It feels no way other than changing the local user's home directory on clients and auto-mounting the home directory in autofs but the same local admin user on clients which I am aiming to secure is also available as user accounts on server(admin, guest)...

Update:3

I compromised just moving(usermod -m -d /local-home/admin admin) the already existing local user accounts to different home directory and then I setup automount for home on client. Again I fell into problem, once the client is authenticated by ldap, it's not fetching the home documents from server but works only if I manually mount it(mount ldapserver:/ldaphome/test /home/test) on the client. The client is karmic...

Client Config:

vim /etc/nsswitch.conf:

# pre_auth-client-config # passwd:         compat
passwd: files ldap
# pre_auth-client-config # group:          compat
group: files ldap
# pre_auth-client-config # shadow:         compat
shadow: files ldap

hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
networks:       files

protocols:      db files
services:       db files
ethers:         db files
rpc:            db files

# pre_auth-client-config # netgroup:       nis
netgroup: nis

vim /etc/ldap.conf:

base dc=mydomain,dc=net
uri ldap://192.168.1.2
ldap_version 3
rootbinddn cn=admin,dc=mydomain,dc=net
bind_policy soft
pam_password md5
nss_initgroups_ignoreusers avahi,avahi-autoipd,backup,bin,colord,daemon,games,gdm,gnats,hplip,irc,kernoops,libuuid,lightdm,list,lp,mail,man,messagebus,news,proxy,pulse,root,rtkit,saned,speech-dispatcher,sshd,statd,sync,sys,syslog,usbmux,uucp,vboxadd,www-data

vim /etc/ldap/ldap.conf:

BASE    dc=mydomain,dc=net
URI     ldap://192.168.1.2

SIZELIMIT       0
TIMELIMIT       0
DEREF           never

# TLS certificates (needed for GnuTLS)
TLS_CACERT      /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

vim /etc/auto.master:

+auto.master

/home   /etc/auto.home

vim /etc/auto.home:

*               192.168.1.2:/ldaphome/&

I shared ldaphome at the server(192.168.1.2). Now the problem is I have /home as a separate partition on client and I unmounted it in fstab and mounted it with ldaphome which you could see in autofs config. When I try to login with ldap, after successful authentication, it again takes to the login screen. When I stop autofs service, it normally logs in creating the home directory as I used session required pam_mkhomedir.so umask=0022 in pam.d/common-session.

When I try to login for the first time with any new ldap account it gives the following error:

    Creating directory '/home/user3'.
    Unable to create and initialize directory '/home/user3'.
    No directory, logging in with HOME=/


vim /var/log/auth.log:
lucid mkhomedir_helper: PAM unable to create directory /home/user3: No such file or directory

Some web servers I've come across use /home to store the site files:

/home/vhosts/www.example.com/

Others use /var like:

/var/www/www.example.com/

What's more clean and "Linuxy"? Should we all be using /usr/local/www/?

Possible sources: http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/linuxdir.html

I'm planning to deploy some kiosk computers and would like to leave them with a small pendrive as boot disk, keeping the rest at an easy to back up server, ala LTSP.

Right now I'm pondering two options. An NFSed /home/, or a local copy of ~/ copied on login, rsynced on logout.

My fears are that working with files might get too slow, or my network might get clogged.

I was wondering about peoples experiences with mounting users home directories from an Active Directory authenticated CIFS server under Linux. Preferably the mount would be accomplished upon login instead of mounting every home directory on boot (or just mounting /home) and would be Kerberos/SMB authenticated and authorized. I have looked at two solutions so far:

*Automount - an NFS carry over (currently in a mixed Solaris environment). Supposedly works, but haven't seen examples of user directory mounts for CIFS, only auto_direct. And don't know how well winbind works with AD automount configuration (via SFU or rfc2307)

*pam_mount - Just got out of beta and requires suid on mount.cifs and umount.cifs. Also does not work with SSH. Also prone to leaving directories mounted after logout.

What has everyone's experiences been with this same problem? Could you provide any gotchas or trouble you ran into? Any experiences with FUSE or user space tools?

I would like to move the default location of my c:\Users\USERNAME to another drive. What is the easiest way to do this and how?

I know that I can move each of my "Special Folders" like Documents, Pictures, etc. but that does not include the AppData folder. Also, many programs and installers incorrectly put stuff in C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents etc. even after I moved Documents to another drive and I end up with duplicate folders.