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Windows Authenticating to NIS Servers?
Nericus asks: "I'm in the process of linking four separate networks via VPN. Each has its own little DNS sub-domain (lazy, quake, sector13 and overkill) with each possessing its own little branch of resources, here's the problem. I'm looking for a way to authenticate to a server (NIS) in each domain so the owners can have access control to the various resources. The problem lies in the fact that a decent chunk of the machines are running Windows 95, 98 or 2k (no flames, please) and I can't find a simple (re: cheap/free) method of authenticating Windows to a NIS server, M$ seems to think that Unix boxes should authenticate to a Windows box that'll emulate a NIS server, but won't authenticate TO one without third party software. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated (P.S. Yes, I've considered having them authenticate to Samba, but that's a less than elegant solution from what I can tell) "
Theres been quite a few attempts at integrating NT and NIS security (check out the Samba mailing lists, or the comp.protocols.smb archive on Deja). The client side techniques concentrate on replacing the authentication DLL in NT (eg with 'nisgina'), for example:
/ lw-11-integration_p.html
http://www.arch.usyd.edu.au/~doug/gina.html
See this article for more info:
http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-11
The only server side alternate I know of is to use Samba as a PDC, not supported in any stable release. Theres discussions of this in (IIRC) the samba-technical mail archives.
http://www.samba.org/
Clearly server side fixes are preferable due to rollout costs but they aren't there yet. No -let me correct myself. Clearly MS writing an interoperable security system is preferable but they choose not to.
I looked at this a couple of years ago for our network (mixed solaris, 98, 95, NT), the Samba PDC wasnt reliable enough and altering the client PC's wasnt an option; so sorry I can't help more. Best of luck -
-Baz