Setting User Configurations

The following sections describe what you need to do to set up the user environment to access files on the application server.

Mount Points

In a general implementation, each user system needs to have a mount point directory; for example, /usr/apps.

Mounts

You can mount files from an application server when you use NFS. You can mount files either by editing the /etc/vfstab or with the automounter.

If you use the /etc/vfstab file, edit it on each user's system and add a line that looks like the following.

#device     device       mount       FS      fsck    mount     mount
#to mount   to fsck      point       type    pass    at boot   options
#
server-name:/usr/apps -  /usr/apps   nfs     -       yes       ro

For example, to mount from an application server named oak, become superuser and add the following line to the user's /etc/vfstab file.

oak:/usr/apps  -  /usr/apps  nfs  -  yes  ro

Refer to Part 3 of this book for information about setting up the automounter to perform these mounts automatically when they are needed.

Path

Each user typically needs either one or two path components to access applications, depending on whether you implement a parallel hierarchy. The name of the second component depends on the naming scheme applied to the parallel hierarchy. Suppose the path components are as follows.

/usr/apps/exe
/usr/apps/local/exe

The order in which you put the directories in the path is up to you. If you have applications that share the same name in both directories, you may want priority applied to either the global or the local distribution. The placement in the path relative to the standard OS directories is significant only if you expect to encounter name conflicts with commands in those locations.

A path for Solaris users could conceivably be as simple as the following.

/usr/dt/bin /usr/bin /usr/sbin /usr/apps/exe /usr/apps/local/exe

Migration Considerations

In migrating existing users to a new software scheme, you must (carefully) simplify their existing setups. Of course, they need the mount point and mount and the path component(s). Beyond these, you must remove most of the other hard-coded settings, to allow the dynamic connections to operate. There are always exceptions, though, and some hard-coded setups remain appropriate.