Arch Linux

arew264

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From: Friendswood, Texas, US

Registered: 2006-07-01

Posts: 394

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Networked File System

I'm working on a proposed lab installation of linux, and I've been asked to make a working prototype.
When I say "lab" I mean a high school computer science lab, which is currently running Windows XP and a Windows 2003 Server in a domain/Active Directory setup.
I need to get centralized logon, centralized user information, networked home directories, and some sort of client control system (think "remote control pacman").
So far I have a working Kerberos (Heimdal) and OpenLDAP setup that lets a user log in and get a shell, I'm working on home directories.
What would be the best way to go about this? This is a computer science lab - there are some (unsophisticated) hacker types in there that do use linux and would try to break security. For this reason, I believe NFS is not a valid solution, but I may be completely incorrect.
I've read up on AFS, and it looks like it would do what I want in an efficient manner, but I've read some negative comments on here about it.

Can anyone recommend a network home directory solution?

zenlord

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-05-24

Posts: 1,221

Website

Re: Networked File System

At the office here, we use NFS in combination with Kerberos. Should be fool-proof that way, and since you already have a working Kerberos-setup, it should not be that hard to try out:

http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/col … curing_nfs
(article written by the same guy that has installed our domain (OpenLDAP, Kerberos, NFS, IMAP)

Zl.

arew264

Member

From: Friendswood, Texas, US

Registered: 2006-07-01

Posts: 394

Website

Re: Networked File System

See, the trick is that this solution will start out with one server and ~25 clients, but it could very well expand to multiple servers and 150-200 clients, so I'm looking for something more scalable than NFS, which works perfectly well, but only with one server.
I'm hoping for a system that's very scalable, and while AFS (Andrew File System) seems to be what I want, it seems to be a beast to configure and very heavy (~10 different servers to manage it? hrmmm?). I'm really wondering if I should try to get AFS working or explore an alternative.

zenlord

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-05-24

Posts: 1,221

Website

Re: Networked File System

This seems to be waaaay out of my league

Zl.

shazeal

Member

From: New Zealand

Registered: 2007-06-05

Posts: 341

Re: Networked File System

Samba IMO, I have run it on networks with 200+ computers without a hitch and it has the great side effect of just working with Windows machines and integrates well with LDAP.

arew264

Member

From: Friendswood, Texas, US

Registered: 2006-07-01

Posts: 394

Website

Re: Networked File System

Well, what I'm mostly interested in is a network file system that allows for easy data redundancy. That's why AFS looks like a winner, it's easy to introduce new servers and copy/move existing shares over.
Performance, it seems, is available from any network FS.
There's an AFS client for Windows, but it wouldn't be nearly as convenient as Samba. Then again, I'm going to try to set up a pure linux environment, so it wouldn't matter.