[CentOS] Laptop and NFS homedir

Wed Aug 26 13:59:29 UTC 2020
Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com>

At Wed, 26 Aug 2020 09:08:15 -0400 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:

> 
> 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.

Even better: rather than hard mounting (eg in /etc/fstab) NFS file systems on 
a *laptop*, instead, use automount (autofs).

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

-- 
Robert Heller             -- Cell: 413-658-7953 GV: 978-633-5364
Deepwoods Software        -- Custom Software Services
http://www.deepsoft.com/  -- Linux Administration Services
heller at deepsoft.com       -- Webhosting Services