Question about redirecting my home folder to point to my NAS
 

Hi all, and welcome to my first question on this forum. Mods, please feel free to move this thread if it belongs somewhere. I looked in the main headings and wasn't really sure.

I did a search on the forums before deciding to post, and I found this:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...tition-662632/

That's close, and I like that he was using CentOS (I'm using CentOS 5.5). However in my case I'm using a NAS. I have a Buffalo TeraStation that I've upgraded to the full 2TB it can handle, and it's running RAID5 so I've got 75% of that. According to the NAS's web GUI it says it's running XFS file format, which I've gone as far as looking up on Wiki, but otherwise know little about. It appears to be based on *nix though, so I'm hoping that will alleviate the security concerns mentioned in the thread I linked to above.

This is my first *nix box, I have a Win7 laptop and desktop and an XP laptop, all three of which have their My Documents folders modified to point back to a My Documents folder on the NAS. I'd like to do the same with this CentOS box. I've figured out how to mount the shared folder as an SMB and that's on my desktop and the My Documents file is inside that, so I can get to it ... but for the sake of automatic downloads and stuff I'd like for files to get dropped directly onto the NAS.

I have some pie in the sky plans of what I'd like to do (set up a domain for all devices to log into, run a web server with dynamic DNS at some point, etc) ... but first I'd like to just get comfortable using it as a desktop. They say whenever you move desks at work you tend to set up your new desk just like your old one. (*shrug*) at first, yeah, it's a nice place to start.

If you're happy to relocate the entire "My Documents" folder :-

Right-click on "My Documents" , select Properties then change the target folder

Yes, I've done that on all my Windows boxes. I'm asking about how to do it on my CentOS box. For example, if my name was Jake my CentOS desktop would have a folder on it called "Jake's Home". I would like to redirect that to the same My Documents folder on my NAS that my Windows boxes point to.

There are two ways to move it basically. One is to mount the share in some normal network share type and use it that way. For example NFS.

Another way is to setup a iSCSI target and client. That way (and a few others) basically use the network as a real drive. One can install Windows 7 or a few linux distros on the NAS (if it supports iscsi) and boot over network. In a similar manner the target would be mountable as any local disk would be too so one could install any part of their OS on the target.

Your statement about the file format of the nas is a bit wrong. Your local OS isn't aware of the format of the drives on a network share for the most part.

If the NAS is the CentOS box then simply login as root and edit the /etc/passwd file and change the home for your user to the path you would like.

@ trist007 - No, the NAS is not the CentOS box.

@ jefro - It's an older Buffalo Terastation, I don't believe it supports iSCSI. Terastations run some form of *nix but you can't ssh into them or anything. You connect via HTML to create your RAID partition and a shared folder, and then there's a utility that comes with the NAS that you install on a Windows or Mac that connects to the NAS and you can browse files that way, or (in Windows) using Map a Network Drive you can put in the IP address and shared folder name to map to the folder. I have no idea what protocols are being used, what the file formats are, or any of that. All I know is that the page I get when connecting via HTML says the file system is XFS and that I can connect via CentOS as an SMB. Frankly, I wish this thing was capable of iSCSI. I haven't played with that yet but it sounds like my PC would be like a Citrix client at that point.

So from your previous reply I guess my first question is - how can I find out if the folder is being shared as an NFS?