samba - Jul 2009 - Best way to setup Samba + OpenLDAP + Linux to use a different partition for /home?

Thanks in advance!  I can't believe the level of service / help I've
gotten from this group.

Anyway, I have a Samba server acting as a PDC on a network.  The server
has a small OS drive and one very large RAID array for data / files.
Right now, I have Ubuntu 8.04 installed and Samba is using openLDAP for
authentication.

The person who will add new users is not very technical and needs a
simple way to add new users.

Right now, I have him adding users via the Webmin LDAP Users and Groups
modules.  It's working just fine.

However, it creates home directories on the small OS drive and he would
like to have them all moved to the large RAID array.

I have a couple of questions -

1)  Would it be better to only have the Samba users files on the large
RAID drive, leaving the admin and root homes on the OS drive?

2)  If it is, how would I set up for the admin account.  For example,
the admin is a user named 'fred' and he will also be logging onto the
Samba server.  Should I create a separate admin account?  Or could I
simply create two different home directories - one for the regular users
and one for the admins?

3)  What is the easiest way to set this up so a person with little
technical background can do it fairly easily?

Thanks!


-- 
Matt Burkhardt, M.Sci. Technology Management
mlb@imparisystems.com
(301) 682-7901
502 Fairview Avenue
Frederick, MD  21701
http://www.imparisystems.com

> 1)  Would it be better to only have the Samba users files on the large
> RAID drive, leaving the admin and root homes on the OS drive?
>
> 2)  If it is, how would I set up for the admin account.  For example,
> the admin is a user named 'fred' and he will also be logging onto
the
> Samba server.  Should I create a separate admin account?  Or could I
> simply create two different home directories - one for the regular users
> and one for the admins?
>
> 3)  What is the easiest way to set this up so a person with little
> technical background can do it fairly easily?
I'm perhaps the last person who should be answering any questions here,
as I'm unable to get some things working on my own.  But I'll throw out
my two cents and see what comments come from it.

We have our users files on an external RAID.  If you have that RAID  
mounted on the server, there is no reason I can think of why you  
couldn't point the user's home directories at the RAID.  We use  
smbldap-useradd to create new users, and
the configuration file for the smbldap tools has a "userHome" variable
which specifies the default path for home directories (ie "/home/%U").

There is nothing (again that I can think of) to prevent you from  
placing different user's home directories in different locations.   
smbldap-useradd has a "-d" switch to override, and I suppose one could
edit the LDAP record for the user.  We have two accounts which have  
their credentials in the shadow password file, and can therefore login  
without LDAP running.  I think this is important not to put all of  
your eggs in one basket.

In the case of your third question, I created a page on our internal  
wiki with some examples of performing basic operations like adding  
accounts.  Each semester we need to bulk add class accounts, so I  
threw something together
which created accounts based on a list of users.  As long as the  
person can follow directions they are fine.

On 7/7/2009, Matt Burkhardt (mlb@imparisystems.com)
wrote:
> However, it creates home directories on the small OS drive and he would
> like to have them all moved to the large RAID array.
Can't you just set the default Home directory for new Users to wherever
you want it (ie, the large RAID array)?

I don't use Webmin, but I'd be surprised if you can't set some
defaults,
and it seems like the home dir would be one of them...

-- 

Best regards,

Charles