Re: exporting /usr NFS for small network

[Richard Cobbe <cobbe@airmail.net>]

Lo, on Wednesday, October 24, joe golden did write:

> I am getting tired of updating 7 machines.  I have home directories
> exported NFS for our network (with minimal security concerns) and this
> seems to work fine.
> 
> My question is how do I export usr NFS.  What are the configuration
> issues.  How must disks be partitioned?  Are all the X/card and monitor
> specifics guaranteed to be all in /etc?  If any of these specs are in usr
> I'll have hashed spaghetti flying everywhere in no time.

So long as the distributions in question follow the FHS (see
http://www.pathname.com/ for details), then sharing /usr like this is
fine.  According to the FHS, /usr is for shareable, read-only data; config
files belong in /etc.  I'm pretty sure Debian qualifies here.

I don't think partitioning is relevant to this situation; NFS exports files
and directories based on the directory structure, not the physical devices.

> I was looking for advice on pitfalls to avoid.

The only thing I'm not sure how to do is keep /usr/local local to each
machine, even though /usr is mounted across the network.  This may or may
not be a requirement in your situation, however.

HTH,

Richard