home directory issue with several NIS clients

[Andrew Kaplan]

A reconfiguration of the NIS servers was completed with the end result of having a new master NIS server for the domain, and the slave servers reconfigured to reference the new server as their master.

After the reconfiguration of the servers was completed, user logins and tests of several applications were done to ensure their continued operation.

There were several workstations where an unusual discrepancy occurred. The user would be able to log into the domain on the workstation using his account, but would get a message indicating the home directory of the user could not be found. The folder containing the user home directories, called user1, is an NFS mount that is present on all workstations. There is another NFS mount, called user2 containing additional user home directories, that is mounted on all workstationks.

This error condition occurred if the user's home directory was either situated in the /user1 mount or if there was a symbolic link in /user1 that pointed to the directory in the /user2 folder.

Does anyone have an idea as to why this is occurring on several of our workstations, as opposed to all, and what can be done to fix it? Thanks.

[Dennis Handly · Accepted solution]

Are you automounting the home directories or hard mounting? (The latter can't possibly fail. :-)

[Andrew Kaplan]

Hi there --

Thanks for your reply. I am mounting the NFS mounts via the /etc/fstab file, and do not use the auto option.

[Dennis Handly]

>I am mounting the NFS mounts via the /etc/fstab file

You should be able to logon to that machine and look at all files in /user1/ and /user2/.
Does a bdf show both as mounted?

>do not use the auto option.

This isn't an option in /etc/fstab. This is a separate demon.

[Andrew Kaplan]

Hi there --

Responding to your questions:

> You should be able to logon to that machine and look at all files in /user1/ and /user2/. Does a bdf show both as mounted?

I can logon to any of the workstations, as well as the server exporting the filesystems, and look at all the the files in the /user1 and /user2 directories. The bdf command does show both as mounted on the workstations.

> This isn't an option in /etc/fstab. This is a separate demon.

I ran the ps -ef command, and grepped for auto. There is daemon that came up with that name.

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] the home directory of the user could
> not be found. [...]

With my weak psychic powers, I can't see
what's mounted on an affected workstation, or
any uid, ownership, or permission
information, or what the local or NIS passwd
stuff says his home directory might be.

> This error condition occurred if [...]

Sounds as if something might be wrong with
"/user1". Or with something else.

> Does anyone have an idea [...]

On what would any non-psychic base a guess?

[Andrew Kaplan]

> With my weak psychic powers, I can't see what's mounted on an affected workstation, or any uid, ownership, or permission information, or what the local or NIS passwd stuff says his home directory might be.

The ownership of the /user1 directory is set to root:root at the local workstation as well as the remote server. The permissions is set to 755 at both locations. I am not sure how to check what your asking for with the local or NIS passwd stuff.

> Sounds as if something might be wrong with "/user1". Or with something else.

If that were the case why is this problem effecting only several of the workstations, and not all of them?

> On what would any non-psychic base a guess?

If I did not list other information that you were looking for, it was accidental. I thought I had provided all pertinent information.

[Dennis Handly]

>I am not sure how to check what your asking for with the local or NIS passwd stuff.

Pick a user that doesn't work:
grep bad-user /etc/passwd
ypcat passwd | grep bad-user
Then "ll -d ~bad-user".
And "grep "/user" /etc/fstab /etc/mnttab

>I thought I had provided all pertinent information.

Steven likes to see actual commands and output.

[Andrew Kaplan]

Hi there --

The problem has been resolved, and points will be forthcoming.

The cause of the problem had to do with the user accounts as listed within the /etc/passwd file. The home directory for the effected users listed the directory on the remote server, and not the actual mount point that is present on the workstations.

The solution was to modified the passwd file, change to the /var/yp/ directory, and then run make, as opposed to ypmake, to push the changes to the other servers. After that was done, the user logins worked without issue.

Thanks again for the input.