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Where are the 'Modern' Directory Services?
MarcQuadra asks: "I've been a Linux user since 1998, and I admin Mac OS X machines at work, but I have yet to find a distribution that comes out-of-the-box with modern directory services. Sure, there are guides to kerberize and set up OpenLDAP, but before I can start pushing Linux as an alternative at work I'll need a few things. Are there any distributions out there that can auto-mount SMB shares as home directories without heavy modification? How about a distro that's based on OpenLDAP and can easily be configured with LDAP-enabled SAMBA and Kerberos? Am I missing something, or is this not a priority with the community at-large?"
LDAP/Samba/Kerbros on Suse works real well out of the box in the latest Suse Server offerings. I don't play with many distros so I can't recommend it against others.
But for professional use on networks of any real size, I really try to push my customers to NDS. Say what you want about Novell, but I have yet to find a beter DS that Novell's.
So why not use it? It's a full featured directory service based on OpenLDAP with Kerberized AFP and SMB built in, so why use a Linux server and "roll your own" with everything, and do all the extra work?
I have to be missing something here.
As part of a school project, our team configured a drop in Linux based replacement for ADS and email on the then current SuSE 9.0. Once set up, you can even use the Windows NT Domain tools to administer it. The Linux machine even played the role of domain controller.
Worked really slick. Single sign-on for all machines, Linux and Windows.
I have the Word doc write up of how we did it around here someplace. I'd be willing to share if you are interested.
As others have mentioned, and I'll confirm, that there is an automounter that comes with the distro that can mount smb file shares on windows machines in the network. I've got this working at home right now.