Match user permissions across two machines on one mounted drive

[Cleo256]

I've done a search, and I think I may have a unique question.

I have one linux box that mounts a network drive as the /home directory. It does this through the following line in /etc/fstab:

serv1:/proj/linux/may /home nfs exec,dev,suid,rw 1 1

Now, I have a second linux box that I am bringing up. I want to match the configuration of the first box. I want the same users to be able to log in to the new box and have all the same files and file permissions they had on the first box.

I copied the line into the /etc/fstab of the second machine, rebooted, and logged in as 'dave', a username from the first box. But I didn't have permission to read dave's directory. When I did an 'ls -l /home', I saw the owners and groups listed as numbers, rather than names.

How can I pull this off?

[PLBlaze]

At the moment i'm not at my linux box to lookup the options but see either man mount man mountd or man nfs/nfsd...Since you mounting the shares thru fstab man fstab would be the place for answers...to answer the second question, most likely the uid/gid of your user from box name is different from the second user thus you see only numbers.Hope this helps.

[bdl]

Who has access to /proj/linux/may?

The numbers you see rather than login names are due to the fact that on the system you've exported the dir to, those users don't exist. This is part of my first question, because if you don't see usernames, then most likely you don't have access to the dir.

If you take a regular 'home' dir on one box, lets say, with space for 'dave', 'dweezil', 'sam', 'jenn' etc, you can export that /home dir to other systems in which those users have accounts and use it like a regular /home directory. If you wanted, you could even export one huge /home dir to all the workstations in your office, and each worker could have their own home dir as long as they have accounts on both systems.

[Cleo256]

Excellent! The uid/gid was the answer, and I managed to figure that out with usermod/groupmod commands. It's working perfectly now. 'dave' can log in and has all the right access permissions on his home directory.

Thank you very much.