[comp.sys.sgi] shared custom icons

jwk@SCRIPPS.EDU (John Kupec) (02/27/91)

Been playing around with customizing login icons.  Ran into a
glitch- is there a  way around this:

3 NFS'ed irises- no NIS or automount. User icons in B:/usr/local/lib/faces.
Irises A & C use icons from B via soft link to faces directory on B 
(B:/usr mounted on A & C).

This setup works fine UNLESS machine B is down.  Then, trying to login
on console sends pandora(?) into an infinite loop on A & C when trying 
to access the unavailable custom icons.  It seems logical enough to only 
want one set of icons- how to accomplish?

john  

msc@ramoth.esd.sgi.com (Mark Callow) (02/28/91)

In article <9102262001.AA10384@scripps.edu>, jwk@SCRIPPS.EDU (John Kupec) writes:
|> 
|> 3 NFS'ed irises- no NIS or automount. User icons in B:/usr/local/lib/faces.
|> Irises A & C use icons from B via soft link to faces directory on B 
|> (B:/usr mounted on A & C).
|> 
|> This setup works fine UNLESS machine B is down.  Then, trying to login
|> on console sends pandora(?) into an infinite loop on A & C when trying 
|> to access the unavailable custom icons.  It seems logical enough to only 
|> want one set of icons- how to accomplish?
|> 
That's what we do here at SGI.  A large proportion of the systems on our
internal network nfs mount a /usr/local/lib/faces directory from one system.

Most people mount this system somewhere under /n and use a symbolic link from
/usr/lib/faces. For example I have the faceserver:/ mounted at /n/faceserver.
Then I have a symbolic link from /n/faceserver/usr/local/lib/faces to
/usr/lib/faces.
	
When the face server is down (which is rarely) Pandora shows its default
sketch of a user.  I have never experienced the problem you describe.

-- 
From the TARDIS of Mark Callow
msc@ramoth.sgi.com, ...{ames,decwrl}!sgi!msc
"Spirits of genius are always opposed by mediocre minds" - Albert Einstein

ted@vball.sgi.com (Ted Wilcox) (03/01/91)

In <1991Feb27.183926.26742@odin.corp.sgi.com> msc@ramoth.esd.sgi.com (Mark Callow) writes:

>In article <9102262001.AA10384@scripps.edu>, jwk@SCRIPPS.EDU (John Kupec) writes:
>|> 
>|> 3 NFS'ed irises- no NIS or automount. User icons in B:/usr/local/lib/faces.
>|> Irises A & C use icons from B via soft link to faces directory on B 
>|> (B:/usr mounted on A & C).
>|> 
>|> This setup works fine UNLESS machine B is down.  Then, trying to login
>|> on console sends pandora(?) into an infinite loop on A & C when trying 
>|> to access the unavailable custom icons.  It seems logical enough to only 
>|> want one set of icons- how to accomplish?
>|> 

Do you have the faces directory hard-mounted?  If so, nfs will wait forever
for the machine to respond.
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