[KLUG Members] Distributed Authentication

[Jeremy Leonard]

I have 4 sites all running RH7.3 and Samba, connected to the Internet.

What I'm looking to do is some how not have to manage all the usernames and passwords separably from each site. I'd like to have them sync through the Internet. Right now I just use passwd with shadow passwords and smbpasswd for user access. Right now only one server hosts email using Sendmail. Everyone IMAPs into this server to get their mail. My users are running Win95 through WinXP and a few RH8 Workstations.

I was thinking of two solutions NIS or LDAP.

Ideally I would only have to add a user once and they would have access to all Samba servers and an email address. They would also have only one password synchronized throughout the system. 

Has anybody done this? Which system should I use?
Any recommendation, pointers, or suggestion would be helpful

Thanks in advance!




Jeremy Leonard
Systems Engineer
CNE, MCP, CCA, A+
JeremyL@gracon.com
Gracon Services, Inc.