zfs discuss - Feb 2008 - Recommendations for per-user NFS shared home directories?

I am attempting to create per-user ZFS filesystems under an exported 
/home ZFS filesystem.  This would work fine except that the 
ownership/permissions settings applied to the mount point of those 
per-user filesystems on the server are not seen by NFS clients. 
Instead NFS clients see directory ownership of root:other (Solaris 9 
clients), root:wheel (OS-X clients), and root:daemon (FreeBSD 
clients).  Only Solaris 10 clients seem to preserve original ownership 
and permissions.

Is there a way to resolve this problem?

Thanks,

Bob
=====================================Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/

2008/2/17, Bob Friesenhahn <bfriesen at
simple.dallas.tx.us>:
> I am attempting to create per-user ZFS filesystems under an exported
> /home ZFS filesystem.  This would work fine except that the
> ownership/permissions settings applied to the mount point of those
> per-user filesystems on the server are not seen by NFS clients.
> Instead NFS clients see directory ownership of root:other (Solaris 9
> clients), root:wheel (OS-X clients), and root:daemon (FreeBSD
> clients).  Only Solaris 10 clients seem to preserve original ownership
> and permissions.
>
Have the clients mounted your per-user filesystems? It is not enough
to mount /home.

On Sun, 17 Feb 2008, Mattias Pantzare wrote:
>
> Have the clients mounted your per-user filesystems? It is not enough
> to mount /home.
It is enough to mount /home if the client is Solaris 10.  I did not 
want to mess with creating per-user mounting for all of my different 
type of systems so I punted and all the users are in one filesystem.

Probably the ZFS documentation which suggests creating per-user home 
directories should be updated so that the existing drawbacks are also 
known.

Bob
=====================================Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/

2008/2/17, Bob Friesenhahn <bfriesen at
simple.dallas.tx.us>:
> On Sun, 17 Feb 2008, Mattias Pantzare wrote:
> >
> > Have the clients mounted your per-user filesystems? It is not enough
> > to mount /home.
>
> It is enough to mount /home if the client is Solaris 10.  I did not
> want to mess with creating per-user mounting for all of my different
> type of systems so I punted and all the users are in one filesystem.
>
> Probably the ZFS documentation which suggests creating per-user home
> directories should be updated so that the existing drawbacks are also
> known.
This is standard NFS behavior, this has nothing to do with ZFS.
Solaris has some new features in this area.

You should use automount for your mountings if you have many clients.
Change the automount map and all clients will mount the new filesystem
if needed. You can move some users to a new server with very little
work, just change the mapping for that user.
You should be able to get all your systems to read the automount maps
from NIS or LDAP.

On Sun, 17 Feb 2008, Mattias Pantzare wrote:
> You should use automount for your mountings if you have many clients.
> Change the automount map and all clients will mount the new filesystem
> if needed. You can move some users to a new server with very little
> work, just change the mapping for that user.
Yes, of course.  This would be easy if I was running a homogeneous 
network, but instead I have to deal with several kinds of automounter, 
some of which seem to change between each major release.  This seems 
like a good task for another day.

Bob
=====================================Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/