Difference between “/export/home” and “/home”

Question

In our UNIX machine my home path looks like /home/<userid> and we have another batch user whose home looks like /export/home/<userid>

I want to know whats the difference between /export/home/<userid> and /home/<userid>?

Why there are difference in folders when both are some user in UNIX?

Answer 1

As Noufal Ibrahim says, I think this is a Solaris convention.

IIRC, /export/home is used on the server where the actual files live, and /home is where the other servers mount it.

What does mount | grep home say? I'm guessing that /export/home has a file system type of UFS, and /home has a type of NFS?

/etc/fstab may also have some clues.

Answer 2

I've seen the /export/home layout on old Solaris machines that I've used and it was a convention indicating that the partition was exported via. NFS. This is not something that's listed in the FHS so I don't know how "standard" it is really.

Answer 3

As your question is talking about Unix, I guess this is really about Solaris, not linux like the tag would imply although nothing forbids technically to have its linux home directory hosted on a Solaris NFS server. In any case, having a home directory being /export/home/username is a configuration oddity. The convention is to have /home/username being the home directory and, when that home directory is shared between OS instances, having an automounter managing the mapping between both. Even on the file server hosting the home directory, the automounter should be used.