feasible w/ samba?

[stheg olloydson]

it was said:

>What this would essentially be attempting to achieve is to have a way 
>for a geographically spread out network allow people to easily access 
>their home directories and shares no matter where they logged using 
>local servers acting as time-delayed proxies...all the user login 
>information, user home directory data, user shared data 
>directories...it's a lot of duplicated information out there, but it 
>would fix the problem with authentication and home directory 
>information being temporarily inaccessible when a link is down between

>building locations.  No matter what building they were in, they would 
>have access to that building's copy of their home directory; the next 
>day, logging into a different building, they'd get their information 
>again.

Hello,

What you have here is a hardware, not software, problem. The root cause
is the unreliable connectivity between buildings. To ensure all network
resources are always available, use redundant fiber-optic connections
and set your routing such that you can reach buildingX from buildingY
via buildingZ, as well as directly.
Then you can (although it may be heresy on this list) avoid using FBSD.
Your simplest solution is to use Windows built-in Roaming Profiles. The
feature exists to accomplish the exact task of making the user's
resources (including desktop config) available on the login
workstation. 
Doing things this way has to benefits your proposed solution does not.
First, you guarantee all net segments are reachable at all times, which
is the root of your problem. This solves that problem and prevents
future ones being caused by this. Second, admin is greatly simplified.
Your way requires too many bits that need looking after. The long-term
cost of this solution will be greater than running the fiber.
Finally, you should look into Kerberos for a single sign-on solution.
Windows and AD both support it.

HTH,

Stheg

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com