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Re: Home directories

* Surajit A Bose <email@hidden> [2004-04-12 19:03] wibbled:
> Hello gang.
>
> I have a few questions regarding home directories. Stanford currently
> gives each user a 100MB AFS mounted network space. Our LDAP servers
> are set up such that when a user logs into a lab Mac, this space is
> used as the home directory. We've encountered a few problems in this
> setup.

Heh. So have we. (ACM chapter at UIUC)

> For example, if a user is close to full on their disk quota, login
> hangs, or if it completes, the user experiences random application
> crashes. Also, ~/Library/Preferences randomly gets corrupted for some
> users, showing up as a file instead of a directory and causing much
> consternation. Finally, we're on 10.2.8 right now, but in our
> development of a Panther image for the fall, we've discovered that
> opening a file in AFS space, modifying it, and trying to save it
> results in a kernel panic on occasion: invariably when using
> SubEthaEdit, randomly when using Microsoft Word. (Our AFS folks tell
> me that this is due to some weird interaction between the Panther
> Finder and OpenAFS, but that isn't too helpful when it comes to
> resolving the issue.)

I've come across all sorts of situations that cause kernel panics with
OpenAFS on 10.3. Try running launchbar, for one. I hope you have
better luck finding someone who's willing to work on it than I have;
everyone around here seems to be of the opinion that "Oh, Standford and
MIT and CMU will fix it because they use it." I'm hoping that the
"major AFS sites" will get around to fixing AFS this summer for a fall
10.3 rollout.

> All this is causing us to rethink our current model. We're
> considering creating local home directories on the fly and erasing
> them on logout. This raises some questions for us:

This is what the public labs do on this campus. There are assorted
other places where people have homedirs, but they are not general-access
labs.

> 1. Since applications by default save documents in the home
> directory, users could potentially work on a paper for hours, think
> it's saved, log out....and lose the document.

Yeah, that would be a bit of a problem if people are accustomed to
having a homedir all the time. Not sure what to do about it. Perhaps
symlink the Documents folder into AFS?

> 2. The current setup allows users to set their own desktop
> background, download applications and run them from their home
> directories, preserve application preferences/fonts, etc. All this
> would go away.

Yeah. Sucks, but that's what everyone deals with here (at least, those
who use the public labs)

> My questions: how do folks that create local home directories on the
> fly handle these issues? Have there been other problems with this
> setup for which I should be on the lookout?

I deal with these issues in my labs (public labs, not ACM) by having
defaults that people seem to be able to deal with. People also have a
tendancy to use the same computer repeatedly, even if they are all the
same, so leaving the directories alone for a day or so (a week in my
case, though I don't say so explicitly) seems to keep people
comfortable. Keep in mind that on this campus people don't assume that
they have a homedir; they will always be sure to upload their stuff to
wherever they keep it. I guess there is a campus webdav 'netfiles'
server, but I don't know of anyone who actually uses it.

> I'd also like to hear from folks who are using network home dirs.
> Right now the only other place I know that does the same thing as
> Stanford is Notre Dame, and I'm trying to get in touch with the folks
> there. But if you are using network home dirs, I'd be grateful to
> hear about your experiences.

I do have one network where homedirs are in AFS (the ACM network). We
only have a few hundred users, though, and three volunteer sysadmins. It
works great for Linux, Solaris, and IRIX workstations - and it would
work fine for OSX if not for the pesky kernel panic thing in 10.3. It
was great on 10.2.

> If you'd like to e-mail me directly, I will summarize and post to the list.

--
/--
| Ben Staffin
perpetual nerd |
--/
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References: 
 >Home directories (From: Surajit A Bose <email@hidden>)



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