Managing Systems and Workgroups: A Guide for HP-UX System Administrators

Planning a Workgroup
Managing Users Across Multiple Systems
Chapter 2104
• mail configuration and maintenance
It often makes sense to configure one system in the workgroup as the
group’s mail hub, and in this case some users may want to import
/var/mail so they can run their mailer on their local system rather
than logging in to the mail server.
If you are using a mail hub, you must ensure that each user has an
account on the mail hub (whether or not they ever log in to it) and
that their user id (uid) and group id (gid) are the same on the hub as
on their local workstation. Otherwise mail will not be routed
correctly.
See “Networking Topographies” on page 273 for further discussion.
• workstation sharing
If you export users’ mail and home directories to other workstations
in the group, and maintain identical entries for each user in each
/etc/passwd file, then any user will be able to log in to any
workstation - useful if users come in at different times or on different
shifts and you don’t have enough hardware for everyone, or if some
workstations in the group have hardware or software that you want
people to use by logging in to the workstation in question
The disadvantage of centralizing either mail or the home directories is
dependency: if the mail hub goes down, no one will be able to read their
mail; if the file server goes down, users won’t be able to get to their home
directories, which means they won’t be able to log in. See “Managing
Users Across Multiple Systems” on page 102 for further discussion.