NIS + automount fiddling

[Peter Barker]

On Mon, 3 Sep 2001, Richard Cottrill wrote:

> I've got a bit of an issue with NIS and automounting. Today I actually sat
> back and figured out roughly how to get NIS working. I can now use the
> central user/password store in my (office) network to authenticate users.
> I'm quite happy with that. I'm still not too sure if it's a NIS or NIS+
> system but it's running anyway.

A nicely running system like this is very nice. I've been doing it for a
while.

> * How do I figure out if I'm using NIS or NIS+ (I've tried both 'yp' and
> 'nisplus' in the auto.master file to no avail - yes I reload between
> fiddles)?

Hmmmm.... you could edit /etc/nsswitch and comment out one or the
other. If it breaks, you know which one it was :-)

> * what strange combination of yp* commands can I use to see what's being
> returned from the NIS server to autofs (assuming autofs is making the query
> in the first place)?

I believe it simply says "OK, the person's home directory is <this>. Let's
cd them into it.". autofs pops up and says "hey, I'm responsible for
that", and mounts it.

> * Would having more than one person logged in at a time result in a 'mount
> tree' (more than one file system to be mounted under a specific automount
> point - from autofs(5)) described as unsupported in the autofs(5) page?

You use a wilcard rule. Yes, they are separate mounts.

> * Is this set up possible for Linux, and if so, how?

Surely is.

My config is:

In auto.master:
/nethome        /etc/auto.nethome       --timeout 60

In auto.nethome:
*       -rw,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,soft,intr,user,exec
moriarty.fith.priv:/nethome/&

See the ampersand on the end? That gets replaced with whatever the
"*" matched.

> * My next victim for this treatment is a Red Hat 7.1 box; will there be any
> changes for the procedure there?

No.

> Richard

Yours,
-- 
Peter Barker                          |   N    _--_|\ /---- Barham, Vic 
Programmer,Sysadmin,Geek              | W + E /     /\                
pbarker at barker.dropbear.id.au         |   S   \_,--?_*<-- Canberra      
You need a bigger hammer.             |             v    [35S, 149E]   
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