*NIX

Jan. 12, 2009, 12:14 p.m.
posted by whitehat

Scenario



Scenario

To understand the benefits of NFS, consider an example. A school wants to set up a small computer lab for its students:

  • The main Linux server, Bigboy, has a large amount of disk space and will be used as both the NIS server and NFS-based file server for the Linux PCs in the lab.

  • Users logging into the PCs will be assigned home directories on Bigboy and not on the PCs themselves.

  • Each user's home directory will be automatically mounted with each user login on the PCs using NFS.

  • The lab instructor will practice with a Linux PC named Smallfry before implementing NIS on all the remaining PCs.

  • The suite of NIS RPMs have been installed on the server and client: ypserve and yp-tools are on the server, and ypbind and yp-tools are on the client.

Downloading and installing RPMs isn't hard, as discussed in Chapter 6, "Installing RPM Software." When searching for the RPMs, remember that the filename usually starts with the software package name followed by a version number, as in yp-tools-2.8-3.i386.rpm.

The lab instructor did some research and created an implementation plan:

1.
Configure Bigboy as an NFS server to make its /home directory available to the Linux workstations.

2.
Configure Smallfry as an NFS client that can access Bigboy's /home directory.

3.
Configure Bigboy as an NIS server.

4.
Create a user account (nisuser) on Bigboy that doesn't exist on Smallfry. Convert the account to a NIS user account.

5.
Configure Smallfry as an NIS client.

6.
Test a remote login from Bigboy to Smallfry using the username and password of the account nisuser.

You have the scenario and the plan, it's time to get to work.

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