Simple solution to sync UIDs on NFS?

Hi,

I had a desktop and laptop both running PCLinuxOS 2007. To access my files
on the desktop from the laptop I set up NFS and it all ran smoothly "out of
the box".

The laptop has now died and I've replaced it. Long story short - the new one
won't run PCLOS, so I installed Kubuntu. However, NFS won't work and after
much Googling I realise it's because PCLOS starts user UIDs at 500 but
Kubuntu starts at 1000. A few posts mentioned using
option "map_static=[filename]" in /etc/exports, which seemed just what I
wanted, but when I try that I get an unknown keyword error when restarting
NFS.

I don't particularly want to start messing with UIDs on existing accounts in
case I mess something up. NIS or LDAP etc. seem overkill for just a
laptop/desktop connection.

I tried Samba, but when using OpenOffice I get "Protocol "smb" is supported
only partially. Local copy of the file will be created." and then "Saving
using protocol "smb" is not supported."

Is there a simple solution, or am I going to have to go with NIS / LDAP etc?

Andrew Woodward <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

>Hi,

>I had a desktop and laptop both running PCLinuxOS 2007. To access my files
>on the desktop from the laptop I set up NFS and it all ran smoothly "out of
>the box".

>The laptop has now died and I've replaced it. Long story short - the new one
>won't run PCLOS, so I installed Kubuntu. However, NFS won't work and after
>much Googling I realise it's because PCLOS starts user UIDs at 500 but
>Kubuntu starts at 1000. A few posts mentioned using

That is to put it bluntly idiotic. Why in the world cannot the Linux
standards just define a number to start at? It used to be 200 then 500 now
1000?

The best thing is just to change the assigned uids on kubuntu back to
soemthing reasonable.

find / -uid 1000 -print0 |xargs -0 chown 500
(Making sure of course that 500 is not actually used on kubuntu
)

That will change all files with owner uid 1000 to owner uid 500
alter to suit your situation.

>option "map_static=[filename]" in /etc/exports, which seemed just what I
>wanted, but when I try that I get an unknown keyword error when restarting
>NFS.

>I don't particularly want to start messing with UIDs on existing accounts in
>case I mess something up. NIS or LDAP etc. seem overkill for just a
>laptop/desktop connection.

>I tried Samba, but when using OpenOffice I get "Protocol "smb" is supported
>only partially. Local copy of the file will be created." and then "Saving
>using protocol "smb" is not supported."

>Is there a simple solution, or am I going to have to go with NIS / LDAP etc?

Unruh wrote:

> Andrew Woodward <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
>
>>Hi,
>
>>I had a desktop and laptop both running PCLinuxOS 2007. To access my files
>>on the desktop from the laptop I set up NFS and it all ran smoothly "out
>>of the box".
>
>>The laptop has now died and I've replaced it. Long story short - the new
>>one won't run PCLOS, so I installed Kubuntu. However, NFS won't work and
>>after much Googling I realise it's because PCLOS starts user UIDs at 500
>>but Kubuntu starts at 1000. A few posts mentioned using
>
> That is to put it bluntly idiotic. Why in the world cannot the Linux
> standards just define a number to start at? It used to be 200 then 500 now
> 1000?
>
> The best thing is just to change the assigned uids on kubuntu back to
> soemthing reasonable.
>
> find / -uid 1000 -print0 |xargs -0 chown 500
> (Making sure of course that 500 is not actually used on kubuntu
> )
>
> That will change all files with owner uid 1000 to owner uid 500
> alter to suit your situation.
>

Yeah, I've given up and taken the plunge - eventually got it all (almost)
reconfigured on the Kubuntu laptop. I found a post which gave partial
instructions for Ubuntu, but it didn't work completely on Kubuntu - I still
get a default of 1000 when adding a new user I'll just have to be
careful to remember if/when I add any more. Anyway, I managed to manually
chown existing files and NFS is now happy

As you say, there's nothing like standards ... and this is nothing like a
standard <sigh>

Thanks anyway!

[snip]

Andrew Woodward <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> Is there a simple solution, or am I going to have to go with NIS / LDAP etc?

I tend to sync the /etc/passwd and /etc/group files. Some distributions
will try to override the numbering schemes with their own system (Debian
does this and it is damn annoying. As a workaround, I mark base-passwd
as held, then replace the update-passwd tool with a dummy script.)

(The shadow and gshadow files do not need to be copied across machines because
they do not contain numerical ugid information, so are unaffected by a
change in numbering system.)

I am using a mixed distribution network consisting mostly of Debian and
Gentoo based systems, though my network was originally Red Hat Linux based. I
also use Ubuntu and Puppy Linux here.

Regards,

Mark.

--
Mark Hobley,
393 Quinton Road West,
Quinton, BIRMINGHAM.
B32 1QE.

On Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:21:53 +0100, Andrew Woodward wrote:

> Yeah, I've given up and taken the plunge - eventually got it all (almost)
> reconfigured on the Kubuntu laptop.

I settled on numbering all my accounts starting with 1500.
On install I'll create junk. After install I can append my accounts to
passwd, group, *shadow files.