[LUNI] Centralized Login under Linux.

[Martin Maney]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 09:54:03AM -0500, Samir Faci wrote:
> I'd rather have the data mirrored on the various HD.  or maybe
> mirrored with one central machine.  (ie. client/server infrastructure)

There are, as mentioned, filesystems that are designed to perform some
degree of caching/replication, although last time I looked they were
either encumbered proprietary products or more or less unstable
research vehicles.  Intermezzo, as I understand it, was dropped from
Linux because the research project that produced it walked away (to
start over again without worrying about compatibility, of course).  If
you really mean to simply have copies of the entire /home tree on every
machine... I'll jsut say that I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot
pole if I had to support more than one user (that being myself).  The
chances for bad results from out of sync files or unwanted outcomes in
any sort of automated reconciliation are just too good.  Of course I
have no idea how many users you expect to support nor how competent
they might be - maybe they can happily juggle these chainsaws.  :-/

>  I was reading up on NIS+ and LDAP as ways of implementing this. 
> (Centralized login i mean)

NIS+ or LDAP are themselves just ways of sharing the user info from
passwd, etc., across machines.  Single login usually refers to a more
integrated approach that would allow a user to login on one host -
let's call it Alfred - and then be able to login or otherwiase acccess
another host (Beth) without needing to type his password again (or
whatever the auth mechanism is).  This difference could loom large if
you really do want the chainsaw-juggling approach for the home
directory approach.

Really, a lot of these pros and cons can vary tremendously in
importance depending on the circumstances.

-- 
The dualist evades the frame problem - but only because
dualism draws the veil of mystery and obfuscation
over all the tough how-questions  -- Daniel C. Dennett