Having owner access on files upon mounted NFS directory

Question

I have a Linux RedHat server and a Solaris 10 client. I have mounted a directory which locates on the RedHat server, in the Solaris system with RW(read/write) option. I already have some directories on the server (Redhat), created using a user, say ruser.

The permissions on those directories are drwxr-xr-x . I mean it must be like this so that only the owner can write on the directory. the problem is, when I try to write to these directories from my Solaris system through the mounted directory, I get the permission denied error. however when I change the directory permission to drwxrwxrwx it works fine.

How can I keep my drwxr-xr-x permission on the server while I am able to write through the mounted client directory?

I've already tried creating the same user(ruser) with the same password on the client system, but it seems not enough yet.

Any idea? thanks.

Answer 1

The filesystem is not storing the username, but the user id to identify the user.

So if you want the user to be recognized as the same user on both systems, he needs to have the same UID. That's the third column in your /etc/passwd.

You can see the UID of your user by entering the id command.

So to fix this problem, you would need to first make sure that the user on both systems has the same UID, and then chown the directories that used to belong to him, because after the UID change they don't belong to him anymore.