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Linux Business Software

Where are the 'Modern' Directory Services? 504

Posted by Cliff from the specialized-turnkey-linux dept.
MarcQuadra asks: "I've been a Linux user since 1998, and I admin Mac OS X machines at work, but I have yet to find a distribution that comes out-of-the-box with modern directory services. Sure, there are guides to kerberize and set up OpenLDAP, but before I can start pushing Linux as an alternative at work I'll need a few things. Are there any distributions out there that can auto-mount SMB shares as home directories without heavy modification? How about a distro that's based on OpenLDAP and can easily be configured with LDAP-enabled SAMBA and Kerberos? Am I missing something, or is this not a priority with the community at-large?"
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Where are the 'Modern' Directory Services? More

Where are the 'Modern' Directory Services?

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  • Gee... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheCabal ( 215908 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @06:55PM (#11717870) Journal
    Sounds like you want Windows and Active Directory.

    • Re:Gee... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by otis wildflower ( 4889 )
      Sounds like you want Windows and Active Directory.

      WTF is so wrong with something that's easy to use and administer?

      Does it threaten your manhood or something?

      Why _SHOULDN'T_ an opensource directory system make the hard things easy and the impossible things routine? The fact that OpenLDAP can be a bear to build and maintain is a usability bug that needs redress.

      Listen, if you want to live in a MS world, keep expecting more from people than they give a damn about living up to. That's _REALLY_ productiv
      • What?
        • >Eight(!) people take Slashdot seriously enough to put me on their Foes list.

          I added you and you didn't update your sig - I was so crushed that I made you (neutral) again.

          Now you're in for it - I'm going to make you a Friend
          • I get more replies based on my sig, rather than the content of my comments. Don't know if what I have to say is that boring, or people really ARE that wrapped up in the whole Slashdot thang.

    • Re:Gee... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by sparty ( 63226 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @08:46PM (#11718904) Homepage
      and/or PAM and winbind with Samba3, at least on the client. All available via aptitude on debian sarge, and rather not difficult to configure.

      (I'm not using users' domain homedirs on the box I've got that setup on, as my primary desire was to use Apache basic auth to the existing AD infrastructure, but other than that it works rather well so far.)

    • Re:Gee... (Score:4, Informative)

      by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:07PM (#11719720) Journal
      Windows and Active Directory are a proprietary ripoff of LDAP and kerberos with some gui tools.

      There is no reason a distro couldn't smoothly tie them together with some simple curses/graphical configuration tools. The question is a good one.

      • Re:Gee... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by TheNetAvenger ( 624455 ) on Saturday February 19, 2005 @03:03AM (#11720790)
        Windows and Active Directory are a proprietary ripoff of LDAP and kerberos with some gui tools

        Well I guess if you never used it, you would probably think this.

        AD goes so far beyond a type of LDAP or authenication system it would be like saying Linux is nothing more than a rip off of 1969 *nix and doesn't do anymore.

        (And no I don't believe that about Linux.)

        Geesh...

  • Netware (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 18, 2005 @06:55PM (#11717878)
    What about Netware and EDirectory? I hear they use open standards for Linux.

  • i got your directory right here (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Where are the 'Modern' Directory Services?

    Google.com -- let your fingers do the walking

  • SLES (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sigaar ( 733777 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @06:55PM (#11717882)
    I believe SUSE Enterprise Server (and SUSE Open Exchange server too) has a yast module to setup LDAP easily.

    I might be wrong though - I'm still waiting for my copy...

    • Re:SLES (Score:5, Informative)

      by thule ( 9041 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @07:04PM (#11717972) Homepage
      Yup! SuSE does an excellent job of configuring LDAP for you. This includes:

      Configuring Samba for LDAP and populating the LDAP server with the proper entries.
      Putting the dhcp server configuration in LDAP.
      Custom scripts for Samba to add/remove machines and users in LDAP via Samba.
      Configuring Bind to use LDAP as a backend.

      I'm pretty impressed. I love RedHat/Fedora, but those distros don't have anything like SuSE has for bootstrapping the LDAP configuration. Maybe RedHat will get more serious about it once they release the GPL'd version of iPlanet Directory Server.

      Personally, I can't wait until Samba 4 comes out that will bring this all together (Kerb, LDAP, AD) with it's own LDAP server.

    • Re:SLES (Score:3, Interesting)

      by forsetti ( 158019 )
      SLES 9 does indeed have a beautiful LDAP server setup utility. To respond to other replies to parent, the Yast plugin is not part of SuSE 9.x, but can be snagged from a SLES 9 CD and installed on SuSE 9.x

      Unfortunately, SLES 9 comes with OpenLDAP 2.2.6 (fairly old), and has problems when access using GSSAPI ....

  • The community is YOU! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 18, 2005 @06:56PM (#11717892)
    Am I missing something, or is this not a priority with the community at-large?

    The YourOwn (tm) Linux distribution is based on OpenLDAP and all the other out-of-the-box features you're looking for.

    It can be downloaded from YourOwnBox.org [127.0.0.1].

    • Re:The community is YOU! (Score:5, Funny)

      by KillerDeathRobot ( 818062 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @07:07PM (#11718012) Homepage
      I can't believe I clicked that link.

    • Re:The community is YOU! (Score:5, Funny)

      by bradkittenbrink ( 608877 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @08:40PM (#11718853) Homepage Journal
      Please do not post links to porn sites, we're trying to have a civilized discussion here...

    • Re:The community is YOU! (Score:4, Funny)

      by grozzie2 ( 698656 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @10:50PM (#11719633)
      You know, that's interesting, I've been using YourOwn linux for a long time now. I tend to deploy mostly headless boxes, on non intel hardware, used as embedded process control systems, and network edge devices. With no monitors or keyboards, we do have 'special' requirements for our deployments, with a strong preference to do everything using web based configuration, and centralized distribution of stock configurations and updates. When I first started dabbling with linux, I did look all around for the 'perfect' distribution, and I was really surprised when I finally discovered and settled on this one. It's absolutely uncanny how the developers there seem to always anticipate my needs exactly. I've got a little over 300 boxes out there currently in 'edge device' roles. Just a few weeks ago we were having a round table discussion here, and comments came up about how nice it would be to have sip proxies on all the edge devices. It was amazing, only a couple days later, an asterisk package showed up on the packages list at YourOwnBox.org [127.0.0.1] complete with really well planned out default configurations, and scripts to automatically deploy it onto all 300 edge devices overnite.

      I'm really happy with YourOwn linux, it's served us well, and I cant imagine us moving to another distribution anytime soon. The reality is, it's served us so well, we've actually taken on the task of sponsoring the developers producing it, and have kept them on retainer ever since. This distribution has served us so well, I fully expect it'll be deployed on well over 1000 boxes by the end of the year.

  • Solaris? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ajiva ( 156759 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @06:56PM (#11717894)
    Solaris automounts my home directory just fine. Just point the machine to the NIS domain and it works

  • pfft (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 18, 2005 @06:57PM (#11717902)
    WHat reading 50 different howto's with half assed conflicting information not good enough for you? Surely this is blasphamy against the community.
  • It has to be mentioned. There will be a 100+ open source solutions proposed but none will come close to either of the two.

  • Linux instead of OS X? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I know this is a different issue, but why push for Linux if you're already using OS X at work?

  • Novell eDirectory (Score:5, Informative)

    by ezs ( 444264 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @06:58PM (#11717910) Homepage
    You didn't ask for open source.

    Novell eDirectory has been available for many years running on Linux (as well as other platforms). Novell now own SUSE so I'd expect closer and tighter integration moving forward.

    Take a look at some of the new integrations coming in Novell Open Enterprise Server built on SLES 9 server.

    Disclaimer - I'm a Novell person :)

  • OS X can (10.3.7 that is) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jerry Smith ( 806480 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @06:58PM (#11717913) Homepage Journal
    "Are there any distributions out there that can auto-mount SMB shares as home directories without heavy modification?"
    It takes 3 shellcommands and inserting your favorite validation-server to hook up an osx-client on an AD-server, SMB-shares included (not DFS though, as far as I know)
    • It takes 3 shellcommands and inserting your favorite validation-server to hook up an osx-client on an AD-server, SMB-shares included

      ... Except that he's not looking for AD, he's looking for the AD equivilent on Linux. Though he didn't say it, he's probably also looking for open source, which AD is most definately not.

      TW

    • Solution here!! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jerry Smith ( 806480 )
      "Joining the Active Directory with OS X.3 Client"
      http://www.infodiv.unimelb.edu.au/lansg/osx/os-x3- ad.html [unimelb.edu.au]
      I have nothing to add to the article.
    • The reason I'm asking is because I've been using the OS X directory services, and just got 200 Macs onto the AD, and it's a beautiful thing. It's much more convoluted to do the same in Linux, and one would think that there would be some sort of similar tool to handle directory-service kung-fu.

      I'm just concerned that Linux will have a lot of trouble getting into the mid-sized and small shops because it doesn't interoperate well out-of-the-box, to connect a Linux box to an AD is a total pain in the arse, ser

  • In fact... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ENOENT ( 25325 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @07:00PM (#11717930) Homepage Journal
    we believe that the idea of data is obsolete, and that, in the future, users will demand less and less of it, and more and more menu animations.

  • Have you heard of this company called "Novell"? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mosel-saar-ruwer ( 732341 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @07:01PM (#11717948)

    There's this company called Novell that has this product called, variously, "NetWare Directory Services", "Novell Directory Services", "eDirectory", and "Nsure/exteNd/Nterprise/Ngage".

    Okay, so maybe their marketing department has sucked big donkey dongs for like the last ten years and that's why you've never heard of them.

    But rumor has it they purchased this outfit called SuSE, and that all their stuff has been ported to the Linux kernel, and they also purchased this other outfit, called Ximian, so that all their stuff would play nice with .NET, and...

    Well, you get the picture.

  • LDAP is critical to Linux's survival now. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zombie Ryushu ( 803103 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @07:05PM (#11717988)
    LDAP, Kerberos, Samba and all the things that come with that are critical to Linux's survival now. Linux will either live or Die on its ability to use LDAP, Kerberos, SSL and Samba.

    LDAP is Linux's ultimate ability that permiates everything Linux can do and makes the many peices of Linux whole. Only the greatest of Linux Users cann use LDAP.

    The thing is, its too damn hard, too damn difficult, and there is not enough documentation and configuration too;s for LDAP out there. I've spent three years on LDAP - I know.
    • I have to agree: considering how widespread its use and how critical its role, LDAP docs and tools suck rocks.

      It's incredible, really.
    • I agree to a large extent with the issue regarding documentation, etc.

      But OpenLDAP is improving. I am still not happy with it, but it is largely designed to be a good toolkit for building a directory services architecture than it is such an architecture itself.

      This being said, it should not be that hard to set up Linux to do these things.

    • Re:LDAP is critical to Linux's survival now. (Score:4, Informative)

      by prockcore ( 543967 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @07:37PM (#11718272)
      Only the greatest of Linux Users cann use LDAP.

      I made the following changes on my linux box:

      Step 1:
      Edit /etc/nsswitch.conf
      add "ldap" to the passwd, shadow, and group lines.
      add "nisplus" to automount line

      Step 2:
      Edit /etc/ldap.conf
      Set host and base DN

      Step 3:
      There is no step 3!
    • I'm a bit upset, it seems like there oughtta be a distro based on LDAP out there, a distro without the default user and group info in /etc/passwd, but stored in LDAP. This same distro oughtta ship with as many services kerberized as possible, and a pre-configured KDC or setup tool to link to an existing one.

    • Re:LDAP is critical to Linux's survival now. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mrroach ( 164090 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @09:42PM (#11719251)
      One of the things that has always annoyed me is how bad the administration tools for LDAP are. My preferred method for quite a while was to keep an LDIF laying around that I would edit and import with slapadd. Not a beautiful solution.

      I have since created an LDAP admin tool that doesn't have a strange obsession with DN's, doesn't make you specify UIDNumbers, and generally tries not to suck.

      It is also (to my knowledge) the only LDAP admin tool that will manage your Kerberos principals alongside your LDAP users (if you're into that sort of thing). Anyhow, enough of my blathering, check it out: (http://edsadmin.sf.net).

      The next step of my Grand Vision is EDSRealmAssistant, which currently auto-configures samba+ldap, and will in the future do the whole LDAP+SAMBA+KRB5+DNS+DHCP shebang that everyone wants but is too lazy to set up :-)

      -Mark

    • That's because LDAP sucks, hardcore. I don't mean that the developers of things like OpenLDAP suck, what I mean is that the specification and the protocols and whatnot suck. LDAP shares with it's predecessor X.500 the very serious flaw of over-generalization. They picked a very broad design that attempts to do everything for everyone, which means every little thing in LDAP has to be subclassable, extensible, flexible, etc. Then you have all these schemas that try to tie down common usages, but different

  • NDS is Best (Score:5, Interesting)

    by duncan ( 16437 ) <chuckf410@NOspam.yahoo.com> on Friday February 18, 2005 @07:06PM (#11717998)
    LDAP/Samba/Kerbros on Suse works real well out of the box in the latest Suse Server offerings. I don't play with many distros so I can't recommend it against others.

    But for professional use on networks of any real size, I really try to push my customers to NDS. Say what you want about Novell, but I have yet to find a beter DS that Novell's.

  • Try Suse (Score:4, Informative)

    by kanotspell ( 520779 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @07:09PM (#11718030)
    Suse will hold your hand through the whole process of setting up and authenticating to OpenLDAP and integrating with Samba. You still need to know what you're doing, and you'll probably want to tweak a thing or two, but Suse makes it nice and friendly. You need the enterprise version (which you pretty much need to pay for) to setup the server, that's the only real catch.

  • OS X Server has it built in... Open Directory (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CatOne ( 655161 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @07:10PM (#11718042)
    So why not use it? It's a full featured directory service based on OpenLDAP with Kerberized AFP and SMB built in, so why use a Linux server and "roll your own" with everything, and do all the extra work?

    I have to be missing something here.
    • Because 'the people upstairs' who make purchasing decisions are dead-set on x86 hardware in the server room. Also, there's perfectly good x86 hardware in there now, I'd rather use itr than pay Apple for new metal.

      • Re:OS X Server has it built in... Open Directory (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Leo McGarry ( 843676 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @08:28PM (#11718746)
        Because 'the people upstairs' who make purchasing decisions are dead-set on x86 hardware in the server room.

        They are wrong. Explain this to them. That's part of your job.

        Also, there's perfectly good x86 hardware in there now, I'd rather use itr than pay Apple for new metal.

        Given that this "perfectly good x86 hardware" is absolutely incapable of doing what you want it to do without a massive investment of time and effort, it seems obvious to me that it's not "perfectly good" at all, is it?

        Run the numbers. You will find that buying an Xserve will cost you much less than trying to make your jury-rigged solution work.
        • Run the numbers. You will find that buying an Xserve will cost you much less than trying to make your jury-rigged solution work.

          I recently installed an XServe. If I ever got mod points, I'd give them to the above post. Not only is the OS superb, the hardware is _very_ impressive. It even has blinkenlights [apple.com]! Tell *that* to the guys who only want x86 hardware... I only wish I'd found an image of one running, those lights really are slick-looking ;-).

          But really, if you're looking for a good LDAP implementation

  • the latest SuSE Professional

  • Small demand (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) * <{jmorris} {at} {beau.org}> on Friday February 18, 2005 @07:12PM (#11718068)
    Yes having a setup for LDAP with SAMBA tied in would be a plus, you have to consider why it hasen't happened yet.

    Only fairly large shops NEED that and they only need to set it up once. The existing howtos appear to be addressing that need well enough that it has not become a big enough itch for anyone to scratch. Again, because once you know enough about it to write the wizards to make setting it all up easy, you have your site done and will probably will never need to do it again. So until a distro vendor sees it as a big enough selling feature to undertake the work I doubt it will happen.
    • Apple has integrate OpenLDAP and Samba very tightly. They have also separate out the authentication information from LDAP to a separate Password Server (essentially a SASL repository). Kerberos is also set up so that the passwords sync to Kerberos too for kerberize apps.

      Here's what I think we need as far as enterprise linux directory services go:
      1. Standardize on a sasl repository with hooks into Kerberos for maintaing and authenticating all passwords (md5, nt hashes, sendmail auth mechanisms)
      2. Tightly i

  • Using *nix as a Primary Domain Controller (Score:5, Informative)

    by Noksagt ( 69097 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @07:12PM (#11718070) Homepage
    I recently setup a *nix server to act as a Windows PDC for our small workgroup. It wan't that difficult, particularly with the scripts and how-to from IDEALX [idealx.org]. Any distro with sane, centrally-managed package management will be equally easy. By this, I mean apt or portage or even the *BSDs. I wouln't undertake this with an RPM distro, unless I had plenty of support.

    I don't yet run Kerberos, as I wouldn't gain much from it. There aren't enough Kerberized apps & MS's approach to "embracing and extinguishing" Kerberos has left *nix implementations largely incompatible with MS's implementation. I run OpenLDAP solely over SSL. SMB traffic is limited to out intranet (basically one room) & we are a small shop, so Kerberos isn't a priority. We will later add it.

    Home directories are all on the server. Samba is configured to allow windows to mount them & windows is configured to use them as the "My Documents" directories.

    I have setup Kerberised SAMBA, OpenLDAP, and SSH at my previous employer. It isn't difficult.

    Novell's eDirectory is nice if your ethics & wallet can afford it. OS X also has a decent implementation.

    The "modern" approach is to do something OTHER than SMB, but that requires a MS-free zone.
    • Any distro with sane, centrally-managed package management will be equally easy. By this, I mean apt or portage or even the *BSDs. I wouln't undertake this with an RPM distro, unless I had plenty of support.

      Interesting. I've been using package managers for years on everything from SunOS to SCO to dozens of Linux flavors. RPM is actually a pretty good package management system, better in most cases than package managers for the big systems. It is somewhat lacking in roll-back ability, something that Solari

  • I'm a bit confused? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ratboy666 ( 104074 ) <<moc.liamtoh> <ta> <legiew_derf>> on Friday February 18, 2005 @07:16PM (#11718108) Journal
    I mount NFS home directories with automount on Red Hat 9.

    So, I push an auto.master using NIS. Works peachy. I've never tried it -- but I think that using an SMB share as a home directory would be as simple as changing the automount specification? This doesn't work?

    As to NIS: its what I use, and RH9 is happy with it.

    However, RH9 does offer "NIS", "LDAP", "Kerberos 5", "SMB" authentication schemes on installation.

    Note that autofs uses /etc/auto.master, or NIS to get the auto.master. No biggy -- isn't updating /etc/auto.master easy enough (assuming you don't push it with NIS)?

    What are you trying to do?

    Ratboy

    • Re:I'm a bit confused? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by INetUser ( 723076 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @07:39PM (#11718298)
      As part of a school project, our team configured a drop in Linux based replacement for ADS and email on the then current SuSE 9.0. Once set up, you can even use the Windows NT Domain tools to administer it. The Linux machine even played the role of domain controller.

      Worked really slick. Single sign-on for all machines, Linux and Windows.

      I have the Word doc write up of how we did it around here someplace. I'd be willing to share if you are interested.

      As others have mentioned, and I'll confirm, that there is an automounter that comes with the distro that can mount smb file shares on windows machines in the network. I've got this working at home right now.

  • ISODE - X.500 server - been available since 1992 (Score:5, Informative)

    by lkcl ( 517947 ) <lkcl@lkcl.net> on Friday February 18, 2005 @07:25PM (#11718159) Homepage
    ISODE-8.0, a complete and BSD-licensed X.500 server, has been available since 1992.

    (available at http://opendce.hands.com)

    except of course nobody _noticed_ because in 1992, things like free software didn't really exist.

    and, of course, X.500 was "far too complicated".

    now, of course, everyone is whining that "oo, wouldn't it be nice if only LDAP could do X" and if you look at X.500 you find it _can_ do X.

    repeat for any value of X...
    • Actually, there was plenty of free software available in 1992.

      At about that time I was writing X.500 based applications using ISODE.

      In my estimation, X.500 failed to take off for five reasons. The first was that it was overly complex. The protocol was certainly complex. While ISODE made things easier, building applications was still too complicated.

      The second is that X.500 was a resource pig, both on the client and the server.

      The third is that there were too many optional features in the protocol. N
  • you also might want to look at XAD.

    which isn't free, because it's based on FreeDCE, which is BSD-licensed, and therefore it's not a requirement for the source code to be made available.

    but it utilises and brings together all of the pieces of the puzzle that you're looking for, in a way that no free software project yet does...

  • Similar Question (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RichiP ( 18379 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @07:36PM (#11718262) Homepage
    I've a similar question myself: Is there a Linux distro which, upon installation, aids in the setup of a Directory Services server, a network filesystem for storing user data (possibly including $HOME directories) and installation of client workstations which use those services?

    I'm talking of the same installation disks, but at the very onset, instead of just asking (or perhaps more than just asking) if I want a Desktop, Server or workstation install, it include sub-options like:

    Server:
    [] Directory Services Server
    [] Network File Server
    [] User $HOME directory (or some other friendly name)
    [] Print Services Server
    Workstation: ...

    In other words, the very things one would need and in the order one would install for a small- to medium-sized enterprise.

  • SLES and yast2 (Score:3, Informative)

    by sflory ( 2747 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @07:38PM (#11718288)
    http://www.djack.com.pl/Suse9hlp/ch21s08.html [djack.com.pl]

    See 21.8.5. LDAP Server Configuration with YaST

  • I'm still waiting... (Score:3, Funny)

    by jeweekes ( 833112 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @08:14PM (#11718630)
    I'm still waiting for the hover-cars we were promised in the 60's, let alone reliable directory services that have just started to be used!

  • The Hurderos Project (Score:3, Informative)

    by heydrick ( 91504 ) * on Friday February 18, 2005 @08:45PM (#11718893)
    You should check out the Hurderos [hurderos.org] project. The goal of Hurderos is to create a framework for directory and authentication using open tools. In other words, an open-source equivalent of Active Directory and NDS.

    Although the project is in its infancy, it has really good ideas for integrating identity management, authn, and authz.

    http://www.hurderos.org [hurderos.org]

  • only needs a wizard... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 ) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Friday February 18, 2005 @09:41PM (#11719241) Journal
    this sounds like windows users whining about mountpoints. yeah, docs are lacking, but all the components are there, some twice over. just glue it all together with a little bash. done -- probably even with lower TCO.

  • RHEL4 does that just fine (Score:3, Informative)

    by X ( 1235 ) <x@xman.org> on Friday February 18, 2005 @10:09PM (#11719402) Homepage Journal
    I'm working on a RHEL4 machine that I setup to use LDAP during the install. It was very easy, all done through a simple GUI. Worked great.

  • sounds to me like... (Score:3, Informative)

    by CAIMLAS ( 41445 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:17PM (#11719776)
    Sounds to me like you're asking for two seperate things.

    1) A Linux desktop distribution which can automount $HOME directories (from a central server?) on normal workstations with a fair amount of ease (in terms of configuration).

    Answer: There's nothing that I know of that can do this "out of the box" so to speak, but it should be fairly trivial to do.

    I'll make note that mounting a share on a Windows server to a Linux desktop seems to often result in the share mount dying - it's kind of messy without using automount, and I've not personally used automount much.

    I can't speak for kerebos auth itself, as I'm not too familiar with that element...

    Other than that, though, it should be relatively trivial to set automount up to mount a samba share using credentials provided by OpenLDAP or what have you. As you can mount SMB shares via fstab, it's not really an issue to jump up one step and use automount. I am, of course, assuming you'll be making a single "desktop deployment" image and not doing the antiquated thing and manually configuring each machine - that would be just dumb.

    2) A Linux server distribution with OpenLDAP + Samba + Kerberos set up, out of the box, so that all you'd have to do would be populate the OpenLDAP server with username/password combinations.

    There's nothing that does this which I'm aware of. That's why a company should hire competent people; maybe that's partially why no distro has done it - it's hard, and the distro people don't want to piss off the competent admins by making their skillset "outdated". But that's just a guess.

    Another guess is that it's simply not a widely deployed combination. The organization I work for now has (only) several thousand NetPCs deployed in the field, and it's just an NT4 domain login with LDAP on the backend. Groupwise is used on the client side to tie into LDAP directly.

  • It's probably out there...but not documented well (Score:3, Interesting)

    by harlows_monkeys ( 106428 ) on Saturday February 19, 2005 @12:30AM (#11720179) Homepage
    This whole area is just a mess when it comes to documentation, making it hard to figure out what the hell you actually need. Take LDAP, for example. I understand the lightweight in LDAP is in comparision to X.500. OK, cool. The problem is most of the documentation for various LDAP products seems to assume you are intimately familiar with X.500 stuff. So, I suppose someone coming from the X.500 would would be quite delighted with LDAP.

    However, for those who know little or nothing of X.500 and are just looking for simple directory services, this makes the LDAP documentation pretty much worthless or extremely annoying, depending on just how tenacious you are.

    I don't mean to pick on the various LDAP projects. This kind of thing happens all over the place with free enterprise software.

  • mkautosmb (Score:4, Informative)

    by samjam ( 256347 ) on Saturday February 19, 2005 @05:23AM (#11721216) Homepage Journal
    search freshmeat for mkautosmb, its absolutely top.
    It browses your LAN and creates automount config files for them, yee hah!

    I had to edit it to do "autofs --version" when checking which version of autofs you have, and to make it write out "cifs" instead of "smbfs" to ge around a current smbfs/win2003-server compatability problem.

    Either that or look at smb4k, but it suffers from the same smbfs problem I mentioned.

    Sam

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