[luau] (Secure) NFS alternatives and centralized authentication?

[Ray Strode]

> I'm looking to implement part of a Linux based lab where I can either 
> dynamically mount each user's home directory when they log in (this is 
> against a Novell 5 server) or I could possibly mount the whole homes 
> tree, but that wouldn't work very well (see earlier comment about a 
> local compromise leading to full rights on the network).
As Dustin said, AFS is a good choice.  IIRC, it uses Kerberos under the
hood, so you've got good security.  CMU started a fork of AFS a while
back called, CODA, http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/.  You may want to look
into that.  There is also a new filesystem called InterMezzo,
http://www.inter-mezzo.org/.

> I'm also looking for ways to authenticate against a central directory 
> (Novell NDS in this case, but I might also want to do some of this at 
> home where I don't run Novell).
Well, if AFS and CODA use Kerberos (like I vaguely remember) then you've
got authentication taking place at the ticket server I suppose.

--Ray