[Bug 33727] Re: No admin menus with NIS users

[Jim Louvau]

The sound issue has to do with group membership. The only users that get
"sound" are members of the audio group. You would have to set up nis to
allow passing low GIDs and make the user on the server a member of audio
(gid 29). Ubuntu (Debian) use a whole bunch of these... You need to be a
member of "cdrom" to use CDs, "dialout" to use a modem, "plugdev" to use
removable media like pen drives. This is a PITA with NIS because you
have to manually add users to a bunch of groups and potentially
dangerous since you need to export the low GIDs. Not a biggie on my home
network, but... LDAP should handle these issues much more elegantly, but
in its current form, it's a pain to set up, administer and use in a SOHO
environment (read: overkill). Unfortunately, adding your NIS user to
"admin" doesn't get you the menus, apparently because access to them is
granted or denied locally BEFORE the NIS GIDs have been checked. All of
the others (cdrom, plugdev, etc. work if mapped).

-- 
No admin menus with NIS users
https://launchpad.net/bugs/33727