Hi,
I can't say I've ever tried this set up with my Mac - if anything I mount filesystems or directories from my linux machine via NFS.
Quote:
Eventually I would like to have linux look up the users and authenticate from the Apple server, and automatically mount each user's personal documents folder (Would I need pam_mount for this?). Given that Apple is *nix based, this shouldn't be too difficult?
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I'm not sure about the pam_mount to mount the documents folder that you mention, but I imagine it's possible. However, I think you would effectively have to run your Mac OS X machine as an NFS server to make this work reliably. There is a linux client for AFP, but it looks new and appears to currently be categorised as "alpha" software (see
http://sourceforge.net/projects/afpfs-ng]sourceforge here for more info. Mac OS X includes nfsd, so I see no problem in doing this. Issuing the command
in a terminal window will give you more details.
Authentication wise, I would image that you would need to run you Mac as an LDAP server, and have the appropriate configuration on your Linux box to query the LDAP server for authentication. Mac OS X does have an ldap server )at least 10.3.9 does), but I've never used it. You would have to manager the users via the Netinfo Manager application, I think, and then run the LDAP server to allow remote users to query this. I think it's also possible to use kerberos. Have a look at
if you're interested.
My gut feeling about this idea is that unless you actually have the server version of Mac OS X, then I would not do this - I'd actually do it the other way around and use the linux machine as the file and authentication server (be it LDAP, Kerberos, etc) and if the drivers produce reasonable results, probably as a print server also. That's my
Apologies to the vagueness of some of the info here, hope this gives you something to think about. Oh, and just in case you're in any doubt, make sure you have good backups before you start trying something like this. I don't accept any responsibility for hosed machines.
Cheers,
Steve