NIS+? Alternatives?

["Michael Janssen \(CS/MATH stud.\) " <janssen@chaos.cns.uni.edu>]

Some of you probably have seem me asking about this in #debian: 

I'm trying to setup NIS+ on Debian.. I have a number of machines which
I would like to use NIS+ for authentication and also for autofs
mapping..  Has anyone actually succeeded in using NIS+ with Debian? 

I've currently taken nis-utils.tar.gz from ftp.kernel.org and hacked
into it a bit.   It's half-working.. it asks for the password twice on
login, and autofs doesn't see the auto_master table on NIS+..

Also, if NIS+ is just plainly out of the question, are there any good
alternatives to NIS+?  Keep in mind that it should provide security
like NIS+ (column & row permissions), and work with sun and linux
clients..  

Michael Janssen - Jamuraa
janssen@cns.uni.edu - jamuraa@equitar.cx