NFS Setup
Now that the login procedure has been setup, you need to ensure that the users have access to their home directories.
On the server where the home directories are stored, install the NFS server. This is also included in most if not all Linux distributions. The NFS server takes its setting from the file /etc/exports. The format of the file is quite simple.
(options)
The entry to export everything under the home directory would be
/home 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0(rw)
The file
also accepts only IP addresses. To export the same directory to several hosts,
use the address/netmask pairing as given above. In brackets, other options
specific to the mount may be given. Here I have given 'rw', which means that the
directory is exported with read-write
permissions ( By default, nfs exports as read-only ). For this setup, this is
all that is required. Do a 'man exports' to see all the options.
On the client machine you can mount this exported filesystem. Modify the /home entry to look like the one below.
192.168.0.21:/home /home nfs defaults 0 0
The format of this entry will be
server:exported-directory mount-point nfs defaults 0 0
So at boot, the system will mount the entire home directory off the nfs server and all the user home directories will be available. Make sure that there are no sub-directories under home because after the NFS mount they won't be visible.
Login again. You will now be authenticated off the NIS server and you will find yourself in your home directory.
There are some good links related to NIS, which are given below.
NIS Howto
NFS Howto
Thorsten Kukuk