I've set up all the school computers with switches and ethernet cables. They also have /etc/hosts file in them so they can be knowsn as "computer1" "computer 2" and so on throughout the LAN.

Now - what I want to do is drop the curtrent setup where erach computer has its own hard drive based /home/<student account> directory. As all drives are cloned, the directories (UID etc) are uniform but a students work on one box may not be as complete as in another and some are understandably getting fussy about always going to the same computer all the time.

...so now I want all the /home directories in my LAN to point to ftp:/computer4:/home or however else this might be correctly phrased. I want it to be transparent. When student on computer 2 saves their work, I eant it to go to their own directory but in /home on computer4. Looks to me like mount /home should do it but I don't know how to make drives mount over a LAN.

Also - of course it's important that passwords are not added to saving... must look like it';s saving to own drive /home dir.

...any ideas?

Depends on your level of expertise, and the amount of time you have for administration. Assuming that all of your machines are Linux based, you could take a look at setting one machine up as an NFS server with directories under the server shared directory i.e. Computer4:/home/johnny, for each of your students. This would be an access control situation where you would have to ensure that permissions were set such that Johnny couldn't goof up the homework in Suzies Computer4:/home/suzie directory. NFS controls the mounting of the hardware, root sets up access control.

In a mixed environment i.e., *nix/Win, Samba would be the choice, There are other industrial strength alternatives such as NIS (a pain to setup) for access control and krb5/NFS/AFS (good security but steep learning curve). It's all about time and your willingness to understand.

Webmin on the server might make your life easier.

nz

Well then pretty much what your first suggestion said seems to be it. It doesn't sound like the sort of thing that should be hard to set up - if it wasn't a network I could do it via a single mount command. Once set up, I see it as self mainataining (therefore "time put into it" should not be an issue)

I may be adding Windows drives down the track, perhaps to share the internet connection and printers, although I have no plans of allowing them into the linux /home directories.

That said, my network expertise is ziltch. So then... how do I go about setting it up?

Well, I guess it's always better to start with a plan. If you decide on NFS, you need to read

http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/NFS-HOWTO/ and
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/e...-security.html

This will get you started with how it works. You then need to sit down with pencil and paper and lay out a network topology,. What machines are clients, which are servers, where are my printers, how am I going to restrict my users so it is a productive environment for everyone, where is the internet, what tools are available to me as admin to make life easier. You will probably come up with more questions as you flesh this out. In Linux there is no do-all, see-all program to facilitate this blindly. There is however, a dizzying array of powerful tools and resources such as this forum (LQ) to assist you in your endeavor. Sorry to be so aloof with the specifics of your task, but it's your network, it's what you make it.

nz