[Westwales] Submission request

[Keith Edmunds]

scott at hearthstone.co.uk wrote:
> I want to set-up a 5 PC, 1 Server network using SUSE 10 no Windows 
> clients or services. Each person must be able to login to each PC and 
> get their familiar working environment. The server will connect to the 
> internet, and provide DHCP and DNS services. The clients need to be 
> managed centrally and disk space must be controlled.

Hi Scott

Not sure what level of Linux knowledge you have so the following may
lack enough detail for you, but essentially:

- set up the server, add all the users and note the UID/GID each user
has. Ensure that you create home directories for each user. Install DHCP
server and DNS cache/resolver as required. Make sure the server can
connect to the Internet (you probably want to firewall it too: I'd
recommend Shorewall). From a PC on the network (can be Windows or
Linux), make sure you can get a DHCP address from the server. Make sure
you can access the Internet from the client PC (your firewall will need
to be set up to masquerade from your LAN to the Internet interface).

- set up NFS server on the server. Export the user's home directories to
the client PCs (or to the whole subnet).

- set up each client PC. Install NFS client software. Create a user
account for each user on each PC, and make sure that the UID/GID is the
same as it is for the corresponding account on the server. (Many more
than five users and you'd be much better off using LDAP, but that may be
a complication too far at this stage).

- in /etc/fstab on each client, mount the home directories from the
server onto the client user's home directories. It will look something like:

	server:/home/fred  /home/fred  nfs  defaults  0  0

- set up each client to get DNS info from the server (set up
/etc/resolv.comf)

To "control diskspace" you may want to look at implementing quotas on
the server. I'm not sure what you mean by "The clients need to be
managed centrally", but if you explain what you have in mind I'll try to
help.

There are other ways of achieving what you want, so I'm not going to
pretend my way is the best. In particular, LDAP (or NIS) will avoid the
need to create all the accounts on every PC; however, as I mentioned,
that's more complex to set up, and you can always change to LDAP later
if you want.

If any of this isn't clear, shout!

Keith

-- 
Keith Edmunds

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