NFS or an alternative?

[Chuck Swiger]

On Jan 12, 2009, at 9:56 PM, Jay Hall wrote:
> I am in the process of redesigning my organization's network.  And,  
> since we will be using mostly Macintosh OS X clients, I am  
> considering using NFS.  However, I will need the ability to perform  
> user/group authentication since users may not always log in from the  
> same PC.
>
> Essentially, each user has a home directory which only they, and  
> possibly their secretary, needs to have access to.  And, we have  
> directories which groups of people need access to.

Given the above requirements, Samba/CIFS is probably a better match  
for what you are doing that NFS would be.

> From the reading I have done this evening, my understanding is NFSv4  
> will meet all of these needs.  Is this correct?  And, is there a  
> better way to accomplish this?

Note that Apple only ships NFSv3-aware software, and I'm not sure  
whether FreeBSD supports NFSv4 yet either.  There appears to be  
external work here:

   http://snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca/nfsv4/
   http://www.citi.umich.edu/projects/nfsv4/

...which you might look into.

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck