On Wed, 31 Mar 2010, Chris Tooley wrote:

> I see that there is a PAM module for creation of local home directories, 
> pam_mkhomedir - can this be used to create directories across an NFS 
> implementation? Is that secure/recommended?  Is there a better method?

If you use no_root_squash (or all_squash) pam might not have permission
to create the new directory.

It sounds like you nfs mount a parent of the home directory;
if you mounted the home dir directly (as some automount setups do)
you might have to worry about creating both a directory on the
server and a mount point.

I have a very highly customized script which creates the directory
and sets the password as well as many other things so I am not trying
to do what you do, but you might wish to look at useradd, especially the 
-m--create-home option.

-- 
Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison		Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge
[log in to unmask]	http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna