I didn't mean to discourage you.
My problem might not be relevant to you. I could not find other people complaining so either I am one of very few people that have a file server with the $HOME directories of the users, or my problem is very rare.
Good luck
Thanks. It was a lot easier than I thought. The time consuming bit is the several hours of rsync it takes. I'm sure there must be a simpler and more elegant way. Anyway here is a step by step: Server box for box swap This server installation involves three computers on a 192.168.1.0/24 network. sbs3: the existing SuSE 9.3 nfs server exporting /home to 19 clients. This box is also a nis server for the domain sbsnet2. There are around 200 users. sbs29: an old amd duron with 256Mb and 68Gb virgin disk sbs37; a box on the lan which holds a backup copy of the /home folder without the dot files under /data2/home 1.Install text only 10.2 on sbs29. Add yast2-nfs-server, yast2-nis-server and ypserv. I did 10, 48 and 8GB partitions for /, /home and /var respectively. Setup your network card as 192.168.1.29, sbs29. 2.On sbs3, copy /etc/group, /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow to the account of a nis user. 3.rsync /home on sbs37 one last time before the swap 4.install yast2-nfs-server on sbs37 5.Use yast-nfs-server to export /data2/home from sbs37 to sbs29 6.on sbs29 mount /data2/home under /mnt (mount -t nfs 192.168.1.37:/data2/home /mnt) 7.on sbs29 copy /etc/group, etc/passwd and /etc/shadow from the user account (now under /mnt) to /etc on sbs29 8.on sbs29, rsync -auzv /mnt/* /home 9.on sbs29 use yast nfs server to export /home rw read-write to * 10.turn off all clients 11.pull the network cable on sbs3 12.use yast network devices> network card to reassign sbs29 to sbs3 13.on ex-sbs29, now the new sbs3, fire up yast2 nis server >configure master server> domain sbsnet2 14.on ex-sbs29, now the new sbs3, rcnetwork restart, rcnfsserver restart, rcypserv restart 15.fire up a client The first time you login it takes a while, especially if you use kdm to go into kde. I think this was due to there not being any dot files available. The next time you log in it's fine. I'm now in the process of rsyncing all the dot files over to the new server as well. After a year of heavy academic use and abuse, the hidden files account for around 70% of /home. Something I must look into. Also, at peak times the old amd just doesn't cope, especially at the start of lessons when everyone is logging in and loading files and a the end when saving and logging off. Any comments gratefully received. There must be a better way. Cheers, Steve. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org