The latest Unix clients now allow to set the NODENAME in dsm.sys.
I assume the purpose is to allow unique node names in environments
with multiple occurrences of the same client name, but this feature
also seems to solve the problem of allowing restores from nodes which
did not perform the backup: If our Unix file server X does the backup
but users are not allowed to login there, the users can now restore
their files on different "proxy" clients which have their NODENAME
set to X and which have the user's home file system NFS-mounted from X.

I understand that under these circumstances the "proxy" clients must
not backup their local filesystems, but I could accept this. Are there
other drawbacks? Do user-initiated backups on these "proxy" clients
impose any problem?

Reinhard Mersch                     Westfaelische Wilhelms-Universitaet
Universitaetsrechenzentrum, Einsteinstrasse 60, 48149 Muenster, Germany
E-Mail: mersch AT uni-muenster DOT de                   Phone: +49(251)83-2488