[mythtv-users] mythbuntu-diskless - how to set client hostname?

[Greg Oliver]

On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 4:54 AM, Mike Perkins
<mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk> wrote:
> On 29/12/10 00:20, Jim Stichnoth wrote:
>>
>> 3. Strangely, the user and group IDs for the mythtv user are different
>> on the server and client machines.  This causes problems if you want
>> to use NFS to share files between the server and client.  I dealt with
>> this by settling on a common uid/gid, using "vipw" and "vigr" in both
>> the server and chroot environments to change them, and then using
>> something like "find / -user<old_mythtv_uid>" to locate files owned
>> by mythtv and chown them back to the new mythtv uid.
>>
> There's nothing particularly strange about this, it is just a result of
> system users being created (or not) depending on which system services get
> installed on each box. Sometimes they are allocated fixed UID/GID pairs,
> sometimes they just get the next available entry.
>
> You've found a way round this, so you're all set. Next time you plan to do
> an upgrade which nukes most of your installation, you might try what I have
> been doing since I found this particular problem:
>
> When you create the master backend, create all the required users up front
> before installing the myth software (and any other software that might cause
> similar problems). This will allow you to specify (override) the UID and GID
> that is suggested so that you have some control over the process.
>
> I make my mythtv user a normal user - in fact I keep a list of all users and
> manually create them on all boxes (one of these days I'm going to figure out
> LDAP, so help me). Making mythtv a normal user means I can put it's $HOME on
> /home/mythtv rather than /var/lib/mythtv - avoiding possible disk fill
> problems and retention over upgrades. Only then do I install the myth
> software. Then, using that list of all users and their UID/GID values I
> create those same users on all my other boxes.

You can also use NFSs squash function to map any UID/GID to the mythtv
backend user and not have to worry about it.  Just another option..