multiple ports trees

[Christopher Hobbs]

This message may inadvertently get sent twice.  For some reason,
mx1.freebsd.org has been rejecting messages from my work address.  Here's
the message that I originally attempted to post:

Thanks!
cmh

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Hello, list!

I've got about six production servers and a couple of workstations
running FreeBSD 6.1-STABLE and 6.2-PRERELEASE.  Some of these machines
are sitting in DMZ, the others are internal.  Currently, each of them
has their own ports tree.

How terrible of an idea would it be to take one of the production
servers that isn't really doing a whole lot of work, and make it's
/usr/ports available over NFS to the other machines?  Am I headed in a
bad direction here?

Also, what about user accounts between machines?  I got to thinking that
because some of the servers have the same user accounts, would it be
possible to share a password file or home directories?  Should I build
another box strictly for this purpose?  If so, could you point me to
some documentation for achieving such a goal?

Thank you for your time!
cmh
--
Christopher M. Hobbs
IS Technician, City of Siloam Springs
chobbs at siloamsprings.com, (479).524.5136

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