FC5 / Ubuntu home directory sharing without sharing session information

cdhgee · 07-25-2006, 04:10 PM

Here's a challenge. My main machine runs FC5, and I've set it up to export /home using NFS. I've just installed Ubuntu 6.06 on my laptop and I've managed to configure it to mount /home using the NFS share /home exported from my FC5 box.

However, I've run into some issues. My gnome session doesn't work perfectly - probably because I've got a dual-head setup on my FC5 box and only one head on the laptop. What I'd like to do is to find some way to use machine-specific session data files, but use the shared files from NFS for other data - documents, program settings, and so forth.

Any ideas how I could do this?

Regards
David

PTrenholme · 07-26-2006, 05:47 PM

Try this:
On both systems, as root, do this:

Code:

#mkdir /local_home
#mkdir /local_home/user1
#chown user1 /local_home/user1
#mv /home/user1/<local setting files> /local_home/user1

Where, of course, "user1" is your log-in name, and you will need to specify the "<local setting files>" actual names.

Then in either system, create a symbolic link to each setting file:

Code:

#ln -s /local_home/user1/<local setting files> /home/user1

(Since this is your NFS sharred directory, you should only need to do this once.)

Then log into user1 on each system and make the settings changes. (Which will also test if it actually works.)

If all goes well, you should have a "common" /home containing pointers to the local setting files which will be available only when running on the specific system.

The key is to have the symbolic link point to a file that will exist and have the same location in the local file structure for each different physical system. That way the link will be valid on either system.

Disclaimer: While I think this should work, I haven't tried it.