Re: [seul-edu] How would the kids login in the labs?

[Jim Wildman <jawildman@cfanet.com>]

Kevin, 

There are two basic ways to do this.
1) have everyone login to (or authenticate) against a single login
server.  This can be as simple as running xdm/kdm/gdm in 'query' mode
where the login prompt is actually generated by the server instead of
the client workstation.  

2) The other way is to use a mechanism for 'pushing' a common password
file out to the client machines.  This is what rsync and in a sense, NIS
(or Yellow Pages) does.

In either case you arrange for the home directories to be mounted onto
all of the client machines.  This way the user always has his/her own
files to work with.

In my case the server exports (using NFS) /usr/local and
/data1/usr (which are the home directories).  The client workstations
then mount these as /usr/local and /data1/usr.  No matter where you
login (serve or client) the files are in the same place.  And as an
administrator, when I upgrade a program (other than the operating
system) I only have to install it once.  This can be taken further so
the client workstations mount their entire file system from the server.
This approach works best when you have many identical clients.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Wildman                         Senior Consultant, 3X Corporation
jawildman@cfanet.com                jim.wildman@3x.com  www.3x.com
http://www.cfanet.com/jawildman     (513)587-3647