[Samba] Samba PDC - upgrading from winxp clients to linux (OpenSUSE) clients

[Michael Heydon]

>>> My question is this: How do I set up the OpenSUSE clients to
>>> have the same behavior as the Windows XP clients. They need to
>>> store their profiles both locally on the client and on the
>>> server in the existing users home directory. Authentication
>>> for the existing PDC is smbpasswd.
>>>       
>> 	My first idea would be: NFS. If it is not possible, you
>> should try pam_mount, you would be able to mount the home once
>> the logon happens and that should solve the problem.
>>
>> 	The real problem will come up if you need to have a HOT
>> copy of local $HOME and $SERVERHOME, that could be tricky to
>> implement and you would probably need to use a distributed file
>> system, but I'm not really sure what would be the best solution
>> in that case.
>>     
> Here's my plan: I'll share the home directories on the server
> with NFS, mount the respective home directory on the client
> computer in a directory OTHER than home. Then create a shell
> script that would sync the local home directory (hidden files
> and all) on the client with the respective home directory on
> the server during log out.
>
>   
Yes this would work, if you wanted to use something like rsync you could 
achieve the same thing much more efficiently and without any mounting. 
Regardless of how you do the sync'ing you are going to have a few 
hurdles to get over (What happens if a user logs into multiple machines 
simultaneously?).

Why do you need a copy of the profile locally? It would greatly simplify 
things if you just put /home on nfs.

-- Michael Heydon