LDAP for central authentication?

[Jerry Feldman]

Several years ago testdrive.hp.com took this route because they host a
number of different Linux and Unix systems as well as Windows. While
there were some glitches, such as an older Tru64 Unix did not support
LDAP, it does provide a common central database for authentication. My
involvement on this was peripherally to fix a couple of broken Debian
boxes.
My company uses NIS for all the Linux and Unix systems, but have a way
to coordinate the passwords so that if I change my password, it updates
on Windows, all the Unix and Linux boxes, as well as other places like CV=
S.

If I were to set up a network with both Windows and Linux systems I
would certainly opt for OpenLDAP. Fortunately, that is not the case here
in the Boston office where I use strictly NIS.

On 12/02/2009 09:55 PM, Scott Ehrlich wrote:
> I have the following on a network:
>
> 1) RHEL 5.0 Server acting as NIS and Samba domain controller
>
> 2) CentOS 5.x machines on NIS network
>
> 3) Win XP machines on Samba domain
>
>
> When I create an account for someone, I need to first type adduser
> new_person -d /home/new_person then passwd new_person, then cd /var/yp
> and make.    Then smbpasswd -a new_person.   Thus, two different
> databases.
>
>
>
> On another network, I have separate XP and Linux (CentOS 5.x, RHEL
> 5.x, and Suse) systems.   No Samba, no NIS.   Can I still set up a
> central LDAP directory for a single account database?
>
>
> For the NIS+Samba case, can I merge both credential files into a
> central database using LDAP?   I would also want to control password
> length, complexity, aging, and other things.
>
>
>  =20


--=20
Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846