Relocating user home directories to a network share...
 

Ok,

So I've got a mixed environment that includes Linux and Windows AD (2003 flavor).

Linux is CentOS, as in RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 3.

I've got a cluster running on a bunch of systems (ROCKS 4.2) and I'd like to figure out a way to have the user's home directories reside on a network share.

The catch is: it's a windows share.

[It's actually a Windows share authenticating via AD credentials with the storage on a SAN.]

My ultimate goal would be to:

1) Have the user's home directories on a Windows share.
2) Setup athentication so that the user (other than root) log in using their AD ID and password.

How does one go about doing this?

It's it possible?

I'm not concerned about perfromance here... only redundancy.

1. using winbind to make your linux authenticate from active directory.
referhttp://developer.novell.com/wiki/ind...Authentication
2. create a folder at Desktop (maybe networkfolder)
#mkdir Desktop/networkfolder
3. inside .bashrc, insert mount.cifs -o credentials=~/passwordfile //fileserver/share ~/Desktop/networkfolder
4. make a passwordfile in your home directory, insert data as below:-
username=user1
password=userpassword
5. as root, visudo so that user have permission to mount a network file.
6. restart and try.

*you must very careful for 1st step, any problem will cause your linux unable to login.
*you can only mount windows share folder but not the child of the share folder.