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3 SysAdmin questions
Hi,
Three questions of varying complexity -
1. I have the following problem: I want to share home directories in a
network with hosts of different architectures, that were recently put
together. Currently we have SGI and Linux, others may be added. The
problem is to map the UID/GID spaces correctly. On a pure linux net,
this could theoretically be accomplished by giving the 'map_daemon'
option in /etc/exports to use ugidd for that mapping. However I think
this is a security risk, and anyhow it doesn't apply to the mixed system
in question. I think the right thing to do is maintain a central user
database, with all the relevant parameters, and have each host access it
to create its own /etc/passwd file, with unified UID/GID's.
The problem (apart from how to do it properly...) is the silly group
convention used by RedHat, which is unlike anything standard, POSIX or
other. Do you think it would matter much if I abandon it and adopt a
more conventional GID allocation? Does anyone have better ideas of how
to accomplish the task? Bare in mind that each host already has its set
of users, and some users have separate accounts on different hosts. The
aim is to cause minimal disturbance while doing the merge.
2. Any recommecdations as to a good backup tool for linux? Of course,
one can simply write backup scripts to be run with cron, but I guess
there should exist smarter applications, giving easy controll over
multiple backups to tapes and disks etc.
3. There were threads in the past dealing with HD->HD duplication in the
case of identical disks, and several solutions were suggested. What
about moving an entire system to a larger disk? What is least likely to
cause problems - tar|tar or dd (or cp -... ).
Since this question comes up from time to time in one form or another,
and at least some of the answers in the archives are incorrect, how
about putting an authoritative answer in the FAQ? Does any guru
volunteer to give the ultimate answer, or list the pros and cons of the
various approaches? Marc, Evgeny, anyone else?!
Thanks in advance for any hints or answers.
Tuvik
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_______________________________________
Tuvik Beker
becket@shum.huji.ac.il
Tel. 03-5714436 Fax. 03-5334349
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