How to mount a windows share as a users home directory

[Guest]

I was wondering how to mount a windows share as a users home directory. I work at a small college with windows server 2008 and xp computers. We are wanting to move to Kubuntu for the computer lab computers. We can connect to the server's active directory using likewise-open. We are also wanting to implement something like windows folder redirection so that the user's documents and desktop directories get stored on the server.

[ronw]

Not sure about having a user's entire home directory on a Window's share, but maybe two things to look into:

System Settings > Account Details > Paths

Or ln for making symbolic links.

$ man ln

[SteveRiley]

You'll want to investigate the Smb4k utility. It creates a the smb4k subdirectory in a user's home folder. Windows shares are mounted as subdirectories within.

[vw72]

I think the problem you are going to have is that you can't connect to active directory untile after you log in, but to log in you will need your home directory. So you have a catch 22.

I would suggest, as others have alluded to is connecting to the WIndows server through a share and use symbolic links for any folders you want stored on the server.

It is possible for to store home directories on a centralized server ( http://linuxphilia.blogspot.com/2012...ntralized.html ) but that is using linux all the way through.

I'm not sure how you would do it with a windows server. Maybe ntfs-3g, which reads/writes ntfs files allows for a remote share, but I doubt it.

For info on Samba and Active Directory, see: http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samb...tive_Directory

[oshunluvr]

Bind mounts work to relocate home directories if done at log in time in /etc/X11/Xstartup (and then can be reversed for logout in Xreset). I don't think you can bind mount or link over samba though. Can't hurt to try it. I've linked data folders it like this:

mount --bind /data/$USER/Documents $HOME/Documents

and

umount $HOME/Documents

I can't see why doing this to $HOME wouldn't work also. You could use symbolic links the same way I think. I prefer bind mounts for dumb reasons like the folder icon looks normal, but symlinks should work as well. It could be a fun experiment.