network filenames

[Bruce Barnett]

Many people has mentioned their favorite scheme of identifying
hosts with a filename. /.., //, @host, host:/, etc.

I think it should be left up to each site to organize this the way they
want within the standard unix file system.

We are using Sun's automount here, and it solves all of these types
of problems. In fact, it gives us more flexibility, with just
a small amount of administrative effort. As an example, we
currently have the following conventions:

	/home/machine
	 - Users home directories, mounted read/write, setuid disabled
	   hard mounts, points to machine:/home/machine usually, but not
	   always.

	/crd/machine
	- public stuff, mounted read only (by default), soft mounts.

	/net/machine - read only, soft mount, no setuid. Points to machine:/
		used to get access anywhere permissions allow.

There are other schemes we could have done, like
	/home/user - for someone's home directory, where ever it is.
or
	/project/whatever - current location of a project
	/source - points to source for the machine you are logged onto.
	/common/bin - points to one of a set of common redundant
		public binaries. Setuid programs are allowed here.

The point is, I don't want a single filename to point to machine:/

I want to set up a flexible scheme that allows me to customize our
file name space, controlling variations in mounting, permissions, etc.

Having a single name mapping (pointing to machine:/) is not adequate.

--
Bruce G. Barnett	<barnett at crdgw1.ge.com>  a.k.a. <barnett@[192.35.44.4]>
			uunet!crdgw1.ge.com!barnett barnett at crdgw1.UUCP