Re: Setting up a linux network
* Kent West (westk@nicanor.acu.edu) spake thusly:
> Ron Johnson wrote:
> >On Mon, 2002-03-04 at 10:22, Kent West wrote:
> >
> >>Camilo Olea wrote:
> >>
> >>>Hello!
> >>>
> >>>I want to know, what can i do to have a linux network equivalent to
> >>>a windows one? This meaning, here at my college, the computer
> >>>lab network is made of a number of win2k PCs, anyone can sit
> >>>down at any terminal, login with his user/pass, and the network
> >>>loads automatically his profile, home directory,etc.
> >>>The users save their files to their mapped network drive, that
> >>>resides phisically at the server.
It's easy to do with samba server as PDC. We have a samba PDC here
that does just that: auth, profiles, shared drives and printers.
> >>This is something I've wanted to do for two years here at my university,
> >>but haven't been able to figure out.
> >>
> >>I *believe* that samba + PAM can now authenticate off an NT domain, but
> >>I'm not sure of it, and I certainly have never figured out how.
Basically, you hack your passwd to call smbpasswd instead (e.g. via
pam). I never tried that because our primary platform is unix, and
for us there's little sense in doing that.
> >>I also believe it can authenticate off an LDAP server, which I've also
> >>tried a bit to accomplish, unsuccessfully.
> >>
> >>All this to say that I *think* it can be done, but I've never done it
> >>(though I'd love to).
> >>
> >
> >I _think_ he's talking about a complete linux replacement for all
> >of the Winboxen, including clients.
> >
> >I believe that NIS+NFS would do it, where the students' /home
> >directories are kept on the server, and exported to the client
> >when the student logs in.
>
> I can't speak for Camilo, but for me, NIS+NFS would require a second
> database of account information, paralleling that which is already in
> the NT Domain, or am I (hopefully) mistaken? It's impractical for me to
> try to duplicate the student logon information.
Yes. This is, in fact, the major suckage of Samba -- either you have
to maintain separate passwd and smbpasswd databases, or you have to
authenticate against smbpasswd (sucks if your primary OS is unix).
Apparently you can get both to use a central LDAP database, but I haven't
tried that yet. It's on my todo list, so if anyone has already done that
and has a howto, I'd appreciate the link.
Dima
--
"Mirrors and copulation are abominable because they increase the number of
entities." -- corollary to Occam's Razor
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