Hello...

this might sound silly but I have to ask none the less.. I have a classroom of computers I wanna set up Linux on.

Is it possible somehow to configure linux workstations to get usernames and passwords from one central computer i.e. Linux server...So all pupills could have their own username and their own space on the server. Any ideas how this could be done?? I don't know much linux, but you guessed that by now..

I imagine it would also be possible to have a script that would create user accounts by reading a text database of usernames and passwords?? Can somebody with some experience in this matter help me a little bit, please??

Best regards,

uros

I was wondering about this myself (not that I am lucky enough to be in a position to have a whole room of machines to install linux on, it was just idle thought after being taught about roaming profiles by our stronly pro-MS teacher)

Eventually, I figgured it would work something like this :

/etc mounted from NFS on boot (Network File System on server)
(because /etc contains the file with the passwords in, as I recall)

User X logs in :
Inside User X's login script, thier /home & anything else profile specific is mounted, as well as umount and mounting their /etc (assuming you want them to be able to customize options) -- Edit - /home and/or /etc should be a NFS on the server

If you want it to be closer to a thin client situation, you may also wish to look at mounting /bin, /usr, & others off the server. - alternatively ltsp.org has some stuff for thin clients.

Unfortunately, this is just my ponderings, I have no actual experience doing this, it's just how I thought it could be done. There's probably a program that can do this that I don't know about....

thanks for your answer...anybody perhaps know some books about the subject??

I' ve started noticing that a linux user is really only limited by his imaginaton.. :lol: this is a good thing but not for a newbie..

best regards,

uros

It can be done...I don't know how...but it can.

It's done on the campus I attend, I can go to any lab and login on any computer, and all my files will appear in my home directory. I don't work for the department in charge of it though so I don't know for sure how it's done.

one method:

NIS is covered in this book:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/nfs/noframes.html

and is quickly explained here:
http://www.linux-nis.org/


ok, just noticed the book i use for this is out of print, sorry!

thanks guys..you've helped a lot...

@bdp: thanks for the links...