All machines run the automounter. Two maps are used: a local /etc/auto.misc map for the CDROM and the floppy drive (other things, e.g. local DOS disk can be added) and a auto.home map distributed via NIS. The latter contains all possible disks to be auto-mounted. However, for any given machine to mount a disk on another machine, it must be specifically granted permission via the hosts /etc/exports file.
By default, the server can see disks on all the machines, and all the machines can see disks on the server, but client machines cannot see disks on other clients unless specifically enabled to do so.
All locally installed software that is not provided in the RedHat distribution is located on a single partition (/astro/local) on the server. All client machines mount this partition as /usr/local; only have read-only access is allowed.
To allow for common mail on all machines, all machines mount /var/spool/mail from the server as /home/mail, and local links are created from /var/spool/mail to /home/mail
To allow for access to Web pages from all machines, the /astro/httpd partition on astronomy is accessible to all machines at /home/httpd
To allow for access to ftp files from all machines, the /astro/ftp partition on astronomy is accessible to all machines at /home/ftp