Over the last several years, I’ve had the honor of working with a talented and focused engineer named Brian Macbeth. Brian has spent a bit of time working with Citrix’s new Linux VDA technology and has run into a number of limitations in the area of roaming profiles and home directories, that he has resolved using the processes described below.  Brian has graciously volunteered to share his experiences with the extended virtualization community in an attempt to further advance the use of Linux VDA in enterprise organizations. Without further ado, below is the guest blog post by Brian Macbeth, feel free to comment below!

Introduction

If you are deploying shared Linux desktops or published applications with XenApp or XenDesktop, you may have a need to implement centralized home directories to improve the user experience. Until such a time if, or when, Citrix adds profile management functionality into the Linux VDA client, NFS can bridge the centralized home directory gap.

A Linux-based NFS server, such as CentOS, used in this example will service home directories just fine.  Save some frustration and forego any attempts to centralize Linux home directories off a SMB/CIFS share or with a Windows NFS server.  When using SMB you lose the ability to change file and folder permissions within home directories and when using a Windows NFS server, some issues with Firefox and bash shell configuration files were experienced.

This post is broken up into two parts:

Part 1: Citrix Linux VDA Centralized Home Directories (This post)

Part 2: Configuring a High Availability NFS Server Cluster

NFS Server

It is assumed the NFS server is domain joined and the VM is provisioned with reliable storage.

If you require iSCSI storage outside of the hypervisor environment, see part 2 for information on configuring a Linux software iSCSI initiator.

Install NFS Package

yum -y install nfs-utils

Configure NFS Related Services

systemctl enable rpcbind

systemctl enable nfs-server

systemctl enable nfs-lock

systemctl enable nfs-idmap

systemctl start rpcbind

systemctl start nfs-server

systemctl start nfs-lock

systemctl start nfs-idmap

Firewall Configuration

Update the firewall configuration to allow clients to access the NFS export:

firewall-cmd –permanent –add-port=111/tcp

firewall-cmd –permanent –add-port=54302/tcp

firewall-cmd –permanent –add-port=20048/tcp

firewall-cmd –permanent –add-port=2049/tcp

firewall-cmd –permanent –add-port=46666/tcp

firewall-cmd –permanent –add-port=42955/tcp

firewall-cmd –permanent –add-port=875/tcp

firewall-cmd –reload

Create a Shared Folder

Run the following commands to create a folder that will be shared, or “exported” in the Linux world.  We are purposely modifying the folder permissions so that everyone can read, write, and execute from the folder.  As new user home folders are created within this shared folder, those folders will be automatically secured to only allow the owning user to read, write, and execute.

mkdir /nfshome

chmod 777 /nfshome

Export (Share) the nfshome Folder

Edit /etc/exports with your editor of choice and add the following line:

/nfshome 10.1.10.0/24(rw,sync,no_root_squash,no_all_squash)

The above export configuration broken down:

Restart the nfs service:

systemctl restart nfs-server

NFS Client Configuration

It is assumed the NFS client machine is already joined to the domain.

Install NFS Package

yum -y install nfs-utils

Selinux Configuration

If selinux is enabled in your configuration, run the following command to allow NFS home directory functionality and restart the machine:

setsebool -P use_nfs_home_dirs 1

shutdown -r 0

Configure NFS Mount

This example assumes:

1. A domain user has already logged on to the machine and the /home/<DOMAIN> folder has been created.
2. The exported NFS directory is nfshome and the home directory path is /home/DEMO.

Edit /etc/fstab with your editor of choice and add the following to the end of the file:

nfsserver.fqdn:/nfshome /home/DEMO nfs4 _netdev,vers=4.0,rw,soft,timeo=300,retrans=2,local_lock=none  0 0

The above fstab mount configuration broken down:

Run the following command to mount the NFS export to /home/<DOMAIN>:

mount -a

Note: if you experience mount problems, run mount -a -v to see what is happening and review /var/log/messages for any errors.

Run the following command to validate that /home/<DOMAN> is mounted to the NFS export:

df -h

Validation

Log in as a domain user and validate the following:

1. Successful login
2. Run df -h to validate the /home/<DOMAIN> is mounted to the NFS share
3. cd to /home/<DOMAIN> and run ls -asl and validate that the user’s home directory permissions are secured so that only the user has access to their own folder:

drwx——. 14 DOMAIN\username DOMAIN\domain users

High Availability NFS Services

The NFS server in this example is a stand-alone server which can pose availability issues.  Should you have a requirement to implement a high availability NFS home directory solution using Linux clustering, see part 2.