Help with NFS mounting/LDAP

Hello,

Looks like my spam filter ate my reg password somewhere.

The server is Solaris 9/SPARC, file services are mainly samba (but NFS is easily doable obviously). Samba is a PDC – version 3.0.11. The LDAP that Samba and the system itself uses is Sun ONE DS 5.1 SP3 (now they call it Sun JDS, they used to call it iPlanet). Took me forever to get working right 🙂

Anyway – here is my problem. Our Windows boxes all have local profiles, and store most of their files on their local machines. However, when they log in they have a network drive that automatically mounts (not their home directory, but they can save important stuff there to be backed up off the server). They are joined to the domain, so this happens via a setting on the server.

Id like to have something similar for the Macs. Any user on the domain can log in, and if no local home directory exists one is created. Another drive mounts (preferably to the desktop, but Im flexible) automatically for each user that logs in. Auth is dead simple easy – I just point it at the directory. Getting the mounts to work, not so much. Id like to have it work without having to monkey around with netinfo on each client – thats why I have a directory server.

Any ideas? Where should I look? I hear NFS performs better, so Im fine with setting that up for the Macs (Ill probably get some Sun clients going anyway – so Id have to do it then). In fact – Id like stuff to be as server based as possible (the only reason I wouldnt put the whole home directory on the server is disk space and network speed – same reason I use local profiles on the wintel boxes). I have full access to do whatever I want to the directory.