[olug] System management tools

[Phil Brutsche]

Sean Kelly wrote:
> Currently, we are not using any directory on the *nix machines. The 
> Windows world uses Active Directory. A tie-in to that would be nice, 
> but somewhat evil as well. Finding a prpoer user directory solution 
> is another issue I plan to conquer.

It's important to note that Microsoft's freeware Services for Unix
includes a component that will turn any AD DC into an NIS master or
slave server.  Dunno if it does NIS+.

Also remember that one of the technologies AD is based on is Kerberos.

That's probably your most cross-platform option.

If you check the list archives you'll find a reference to a commercial
package that lets *NIX machines use the AD LDAP schema directly (created
by one of the Samba folks IIRC), but if you're using something that
doesn't use nsswitch (ie FreeBSD 4) that doesn't help you any.  Hence my
suggestion for NIS via MS Active Directory :)

Incidentally, you can make Windows use *NIX authentication mechanisms
(NIS, LDAP, SQL, etc) by replacing MS's GINA .dlls with pGina:
http://pgina.xpasystems.com/.

-- 

Phil Brutsche
phil at brutsche.us