[OpenIndiana-discuss] NFS4 users

[David Brodbeck]

On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 7:29 AM, Gabriele Bulfon <gbulfon at sonicle.com>wrote:

> Hi, is there any way to let NFS4 server not require the same users of the
> client to exist on the server??
> I noticed that the root access on an NFS4 server, let me chmod on any user
> who's id exists on the server,
> wether it is same name or not. Any chmod to a uid not existent on the
> server, is changed to nobody...
> For example, I shared a filesystem, and filled it with an original
> filesystem, through NFS3.
> If I mount it with vers=3, I get all the correct permissions from the
> client view, wether they exist or not
> on the server.
> If I mount the same share with vers=4, I get correct permissions only for
> files with uid existent on the
> server (even if different names), all the others files get the user
> nobody............
> I want to use NFS4, because I noticed that locking management is much
> better, and cyrus does not
> complain. But this permission limitation is annoying.
> Any idea?
>

As far as I know this isn't possible with NFSv4.  The NFSv4 spec requires
sending names, not uid numbers, over the wire.  If the server and client
can't agree on the name, it won't work.  NFSv3 sends uid numbers over the
wire, so it doesn't have this requirement.

One solution to this is to implement NIS or LDAP so that all your machines
see a unified set of users.

-- 
David Brodbeck
System Administrator, Linguistics
University of Washington