After reinstalling the OS, she reinstalled her programs, and I restored her documents from the backup. The last thing too do was to connect he back to our home file server.

Originally, I used NFS to share our files. When I reinstalled her OS, though, Karen’s user id reverted back to the OS X default. Unfortunately, this was the same user id that I used on my computer. Because NFS based its permissions on the client’s user id, I had two choices. One, I could change her user id on her fresh install. Or two, I could use something other than NFS on the file server.

The second option seemed to be a better long-term solution, so I looked in to setting up SMB. SMB has the advantage of requiring a user id and password to connect. This means that from any computer, no matter the users on that computer, I can connect to the file server with the proper permissions.

Setting up the new network shares turned out to be less painful that I anticipated, and, for now, all is right in the world of our home computers.