[MLUG] LDAP v. NIS v. whatever (for distributed authentication)

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

We have a new Red Hat server, an old VMS server or two, a Windows server
or two and a few hundred Windows machines and Macs.  We want users to be
able to log into the servers using a single username/password.  Our main
IT guy wrote the two paragraphs below.  Any opinions?  Is this a secure
approach?  I don't understand it fully, but I don't find it appealing that
we have to depend on a Windows server to log into our Linux server (which
is what I *think* he's proposing).  --Mike


"I have done a little looking into NIS as well as some other distributed
authentication systems.  I get the impression from a variety of sources
that LDAP may be the long-term way to go.  It appears that many OS's are
adopting LDAP as one possible authentication source, plus LDAP is fairly
general-purpose and can serve other needs as well.  In addition to
integrating this with VMS we also need to consider all the Windows and Mac
OS X clients.

"At the moment we are using a Windows domain controller as a central
authentication server to serve the Windows and VMS folks.  That should
also be usable by the Linux box, since authentication via the Windows SMB
protocol is one of the options that Linux supports.  That is probably the
best thing to get going right off the bat, since that would enable
everyone who currently has an Epi user account to log onto the Linux box
as well."
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