[CentOS] Laptop and NFS homedir

Wed Aug 26 13:08:15 UTC 2020
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>

On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 12:08:56PM +0100, isdtor wrote:
> Are there any documented best practices for using NFS home
> directories on laptops? Right now, and this is on CentOS 7, when I
> disconnect the machine from the network, the desktop freezes, and I
> can't even tell if the machine switches to the wireless network. If
> this sort of adapter switching, which is standard in e.g. Windows
> 10, is even supported. 

I'd say: Don't do it.

NFS does not handle disconnected operations well, nor does the client
handle IP migrations well.  You'd have to restart the client to get it
to work, most likely, and processes that are living in $HOME would
need to be killed before you could unmount it.

There is some effort being made in making fscache work with NFS but
I've not had much luck in CentOS7 or 8.  It still wouldn't help with
IP roaming.

Best advice I can offer is to make $HOME local but have symlinks into
NFS for directories that can be safely unmounted and remounted.

Windows doesn't really have network home directories like UNIX does,
and their SMB client handles IP roaming better.

-- 
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>