Creating NFSv4 homedirs on request

Creating NFSv4 homedirs on request
	Chapter 4. Miscellaneous

On the client, in /etc/profile, put something like

# Request a home directory
if ! [ -e ${HOME} ] ; then
   touch /home/homedir-request/${USER}.req
   sleep 30
   ls ${HOME}
   sleep 30 #Is this too much?
   cd ${HOME}
fi

On the server, run

sudo inoticoming --logfile /tmp/inoti.log --pid-file /var/run/inoticoming-homedirreq /lwphome/homedir-request --suffix .req --stderr-to-log /bin/sh /usr/local/sbin/create-lwp-homedir /lwphome/homedir-request/{} \;

Note that the directory being watched must be repeated as the path to the request file being handled

... and have a script /usr/local/sbin/create-lwp-homedir (run as root) that creates the home directory.

	Note
	I 've created a package that will this, with and init script for the inoticoming instance and log rotation. You can request it by mail if your're interested.

	Note
	Maybe it is better to do this from a PAM module instead of from the .profile. But PAM runs with root permission, and root doesn't have access to the NFSv4 share (rootsquash is on). `/etc/profile` is sourced from bash, ssh and xsession and runs with user's id, so touching a file from here comes naturally. Of course, extra measures have to be taken to support csh, zsh and whatnot.