Hi, I have 2 centos 5 machines (actually virtual machines running on vmware server on fedora 7 host). for the purposes of learnign linux better I set up an nis domain "domain1" on the first box and made sure to start the appropriate services as per my book. I then make the second box the nis client putting it on the same domain and checkng it on both with the domainname command. I then set up a user on the nis server calling it nisuser1. I shared the home directorys using nfs, here is the output of the exports file


/inst 192.168.1.20(rw,sync) *(rw,sync)
/home 192.168.1.20(rw,sync,nohide)
/etc/exports (END)

I put the stuff in using the graphical manager. the .20 is the second centos that is the nis client.

on the client (centos box 2) I put the following command in the fstab to mount the home directories from box one.

/dev/VolGroup00_main/LogVol00 / ext3 defaults
1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults
1 2
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620
0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults
0 0
/dev/VolGroup01_home/LogVol00 /home ext3 defaults
1 2
proc /proc proc defaults
0 0
/dev/md0 /raid5 ext3 defaults
1 2
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults
0 0
/dev/VolGroup00_main/LogVol01 swap swap defaults
0 0

centos-5:/home /mnt/home nfs hard,intr 0 0

as you can see the last line is the mount to the home directory on the nis server. the hard,init 0 0 I got from the book, don't really know what it means. but the mount command show this

/dev/mapper/VolGroup00_main-LogVol00 on / type ext3 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/hda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/mapper/VolGroup01_home-LogVol00 on /home type ext3 (rw)
/dev/md0 on /raid5 type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)
centos-5:/home on /mnt/home type nfs (rw,hard,intr,addr=192.168.1.19)
[root@centos-5-net ~]#

so I know the mount worked. also the ypcat passed command shows this...

[root@centos-5-net ~]# ypcat passwd
centos-5-user1:$1$vFqBxV97$4SsEMbcgWO/ksc2Wj9lUc1:500:500:centos-5-user1:/home/centos-5-user1:/bin/bash
centos-5-user2:$1$KjFo1pFF$RI5b3dNeaN3lj4T1fUOE11:501:501::/home/centos-5-user2:/bin/bash
manualuser:$1$kJBT1Feq$8PFvXs7HJi185SVqxsLj40:502:502::/home/manualuser:/bin/bash
nisuser1:$1$CfBnXKiK$TOAvdJNPC1zPkL8.EDW21.:503:503::/home/nisuser1:/bin/bash
[root@centos-5-net ~]#

which indicates to me that the nis client has gotten the right info (/home/nisuser1) from the server. I should mention that I disabled the firewall and selinux on the server as I didn't want to have to deal with that stuff here.

so I expect to be able to log on from the nis host using the name nisuser1 and then see the homedirectory /mnt/home which is where I mounted the remote home directorys to...but I get this message...

su: warning: cannot change directory to /home/nisuser1: No such file or directory
-bash-3.1$

it is the same message I get from the graphical log on screen...so what am I doing wrong here? the output of the ypcat passwd I thought meant that I got the maps correctly from the nis server and this showed the home directory from the /etc/passwd file. hmmm also I updated the /etc/nsswitch to this......

# To use db, put the "db" in front of "files" for entries you want to be
# looked up first in the databases
#
# Example:
#passwd: db files nisplus nis
#shadow: db files nisplus nis
#group: db files nisplus nis

passwd: files nis
shadow: files nis
group: files nis



#hosts: db files nisplus nis dns
hosts: files dns nis

to hopefully make the nis client look for nis stuff after looking in the local files.

any help here would be greatly appreciated...btw dummy down your tech talk as I don't really know that the heck I am doing here

Well ... if the ypasswd file says /mnt/nisuser1 but it's mounted
as /mnt/home/nisuser1 I can't say I'm surprised you get that error
message ... in fact I'd be if you didn't (unless of course you also
manually created a /home/nisuser1 as well) :}



Cheers,
Tink

Your NIS client machine mounts the home directory of your NIS server (/home) as /mnt/home, so like Tinkster says, it's no surprise that it cannot find /home/nisuser1. Your NIS client machine has /mnt/home/nisuser1, but not /home/nisuser1.

You can get around the problem by creating a symbolic link of /mnt/home/nisuser1 under your local /home as follows:
That's not a very elegant solution, though. If you want to share your home directory across computers, I would create a separate root directory for all the accounts instead of using "/home". Let's name it "emp," for instance. Then your user account (nisuser1) goes under it like this:

/emp/nisuser1

Export /emp from your NIS server and mount it exactly as /emp on your NIS client.
This way, your shared home directory will be /emp no matter where you are.

thanks guys...I get it now...whatever is in the nisserver /etc/passwd (home folder) must be the same as what is mounted locally...thanks again mystery solved...

Hello dear,
I think I have the same problem with u . I have exported and mounted my home directory successfully. At server side, I exported as shown in below.

At client Side, I mounted as shown in Below.

but when I changed to home directory of slave host. I found the error as shown in below.
But when I unmounted those , I can change successfully...
[root@aung3 ~]# umount -a
umount: /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs: device is busy
umount: /: device is busy
[root@aung3 ~]# su - aung4
[aung4@aung3 ~]$


Could you advise me please for that problem ? Expecting to get reply from you...
Good luck to you...
Aung Phyo