[CentOS] Re-export an NFS mount from another machine for roaming profiles

[Robert Heller]

At Wed, 10 Nov 2010 13:46:38 +0100 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:

> 
> Hi,
> 
> In my office I have a server running CentOS 5.5. I have Apache+PHP+MySQL running 
> on that server, and I'm exporting /var/www/html, so I can mount it on my main 
> desktop with NFS. 
> 
> Server : grossebertha
> Desktop : babasse
> 
> [root at babasse:~] # mount
> /dev/sda3 on / type ext4 (rw)
> proc on /proc type proc (rw)
> sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
> devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
> tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
> /dev/sda1 on /boot type ext2 (rw)
> /dev/sdb1 on /Disque2 type ext4 (rw)
> none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
> sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)
> grossebertha:/var/www/html on /home/kikinovak/Sites type nfs 
> (rw,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr,addr=192.168.1.252)
> 
> Now I'm thinking about configuring a few roaming profiles here with NIS/NFS, 
> using 'babasse' as my main machine. In that case, I would export babasse's 
> full /home to the local network, and then configure authentication with NIS. 
> 
> I wonder if it can be a problem when one of the directories, in that case 
> /home/kikinovak/Sites, is already an NFS mount. I can't really figure it out, 
> but I guess I vaguely fear some situation similar to the one displayes in 
> "Being John Malkovich", where John Malkovich enters the secret trapdoor to his 
> own thoughts.
> 
> Thought I'd better ask before doing something silly.

NFS is not going to be happy about exporting a nfs mounted file system
-- actually it just won't do it. If some machine foo mounts
babasse:/home as /nfs/babasse/home, /nfs/babasse/home/kikinovak/Sites
will be an empty directory.  Machine foo would have to mount
grossebertha:/var/www/html on its own.


> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Niki

-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933 / heller at deepsoft.com
Deepwoods Software        -- http://www.deepsoft.com/
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