Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3785 mails)

[Örn Hansen <orn.hansen@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 21 October 2003 16:49, John Pettigrew wrote:
> I have a spare PC (my old work PC) that I'd like to set up downstairs so
> that we can log in to check email etc. while the other person's working on
> the main PC. To keep configs etc. as easy as possible, I'd like to log into
> the main PC from the spare PC, using the userid and home dir from the main
> machine, but to run all apps etc. on the spare PC (a smart terminal, I
> guess).
>
> Is this easy to set up using SUSE 8.2 on both machines? How should I go
> about it? Network is already done - it's the logging in and setting up the
> session that I don't know about.
>

  First, you've gotta have your userdatabase equivalent.  Here, I put them in 
LDAP database, but NIS/YP is also a method of doing it.  If you chose to 
setup LDAP, it can be some hassle to export the passwd files on the main 
machine to ldap and get it working, but there are a lot of howtos, and 
migration tools to ease it.  On the client, SuSE has a yast module that helps 
in setting it up.

  For the home directories, use autofs (automounter).  You need to export your 
home on the main machine, and setup the automounter on the client machine.  
With LDAP and automounter active.  You'll see all your users on the X client 
and can log in to their respective accounts as if on the main machine, 
totally transparent.

  The third step, would be to setup a thin client.  A diskless and silent 
machine, that has its entire root on the main machine and boots via 
pxegrub :D