best way to share user data in a computer centre?

[Ken Burtch]

By "/home" I mean, of course, "/home/someuser".

KB

On Mon, 2010-05-17 at 08:10 -0400, Ken Burtch wrote:
> Disclaimer: I've only skimmed through this thread and have not read it
> thoroughly.
> 
> Sharing /home may be problematic since the directory may contain files
> particular to a machine (for example, socket files for some
> applications).  So I would not try sharing all of /home.
> 
> If you want to share a subdirectory of /home, I would concur with Mr.
> Browne that NFS is the most obvious approach...provided you understand
> the problems of NFS (for example, if your NFS server machine fails, it
> is a single point of failure that takes out all the computers.  This is
> one of the reasons people don't use NFS on servers.)
> 
> Last I checked, Coda was still marked as "not ready for serious use".
> 
> Another possibility, as your number of machines is small, is to share
> one or more subdirectories of /home using sshfs.  I described setting
> that up in my article on VirtualBox
> (http://www.pegasoft.ca/coder/coder_october_2009.html).
> 
> If the odds of the users switching between different computers on the
> same day is low, you might want to simply do a nightly cron file copy
> with rsync or unison.
> 
> Ken B.
> 
> On Sun, 2010-05-16 at 14:03 -0400, Christopher Browne wrote:
> > I wish that distributed filesystems like Coda (which later got redone
> > as InterMezzo, then toasted by MSR) had progressed, as we might have
> > something decent by now.
> > 
> > Sharing options suck fairly badly.  NFS seems about the most workable
> > option.  
> > 
> > I wish I could suggest more alternatives.  
> > 
> > 9p from Plan 9 seems widely implemented, but making it work seems
> > problematic.
> > 
> > CFS let's you do Microsoft-centric filesystem sharing, seeming rather
> > hateful.
> > 
> > I'm not sure Coda still works...  it was interesting.
> > 
> > AFS is way too complex for the scenario described.
> > 
> > I'd be keen on hearing of plausible alternatives.
> > 
> > > On May 15, 2010 8:34 AM, "Matt Price" <moptop99-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > > 
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > I've just had the pleasure of building a computer centre for and
> > > with
> > > the tenants of a social housing building in Kensington Market
> > > (everything's working but the internet -- thanks for the help
> > > Rafael!).  What I have are 5 machines, sturdy but perhaps somewhat
> > > plodding by today's standards, currently all running bog-standard
> > > isntalls of Ubuntu Lucid.  Currently the machines are completely
> > > independent of one another, and I had initially thought I would just
> > > maintain one admin account and one guest account on each machine;
> > > but
> > > as I watch the users work, I think more and more that they will want
> > > to be able to access their own files from any machine -- most of
> > > these
> > > folks do not have computers of their own, so it doesn't make all
> > > that
> > > much sense to ask them to save their work on a usb drive or
> > > whatever.
> > > 
> > > Something I really don't want to have to do is to run ltsp in the
> > > cluster -- i've tried setting up LTSP before and at the time it
> > > seemed
> > > like there were tons of headaches.  Also I want the tenants to be
> > > able
> > > to more or less administer the computer centre on their own, and I
> > > don't feel I understand ltsp well enough to teach it to them.  So
> > > I'm
> > > wondering if other people use simpler solutinos for similar
> > > problems?
> > > For instance,
> > > 
> > > -how horrible would it be, in terms of performance, to put /home on
> > > a
> > > networked disk?
> > > -how would i combine this with user authentication (googling around
> > > I
> > > guess OpenLDAP & NIS are the two most common solutions, can someone
> > > give me advice as to which is the simplest and easiest to maintain?
> > > I'm not looking for tons of flexibility, just something that will
> > > mostly work when I'm not around)
> > > 
> > > As always I appreciate the help!
> > > matt
> > > --
> > > The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
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> > 
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ken O. Burtch                                       Phone: 905-562-0848
>   "Linux Shell Scripting with Bash"              Email: ken-8VyUGRzHQ8IsA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org
>                                  Blog: http://www.pegasoft.ca/coder.html
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
> How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ken O. Burtch                                       Phone: 905-562-0848
  "Linux Shell Scripting with Bash"              Email: ken-8VyUGRzHQ8IsA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org
                                 Blog: http://www.pegasoft.ca/coder.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
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