[Samba] using samba instead of NFS?

[Alex Dawson]

At 12:33 PM +0000 1/3/02, J.A.Aylward wrote:
>Sorry if this is a dumb question....
>
>Is it possible to use samba instead of NFS to allow users home
>directories to be on a server.

Ideally, you would run NFS. Samba is a great program, but unlike NFS, 
it's not kernel level, which means it runs as a seperate process to 
the kernel, meaning there's more overhead processes. Which is 
something you want to avoid

>(I have a windows network with samba as the domain controller, but
>also have some machines which can boot into linux, and I want
>interested users to have the same home directory as they would if
>they had logged on via windows and samba)

Depending on how Samba is configured, you can just make it use their 
home directory as their HOMEDIR on windows.

>Something I read implied an entry in the etc/passwd file might do the
>trick, ie replacing the home directory path for something like:
>smb://server/path
>

I suspect your operating system would expect an absolute path to a 
home directory, and not a URI.
-- 
Alex Dawson                                    CSU - Systems Administrator
     +-------------------+------------------------------------------------+
    /Tel: (08) 9380 1587/           Electrical and Electronic Engineering/
   /Fax: (08) 9380 1065/                 University of Western Australia/
  /alex at ee.uwa.edu.au /                  http://www.ee.uwa.edu.au/~alex/
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