centralized update control, accounts

06-12-2008, 10:10 PM

On Thu, 2008-06-12 at 18:26 -0400, Eric S. Johansson wrote:
> what's the current standard for centrally managing accounts in small (under 20
> machines) networks? I assume NIS because from what I've read, the overhead of
> setting up and managing LDAP based authentication/accounts isn't justified. If
> there is another alternative or another way to look at this problem, I would
> greatly appreciate hearing about it.

LDAP is relatively easy to set up these days with OpenLDAP using the NIS
schema. It works just like NIS, except the authentication base is
maintained in an LDAP directory. I have successfully set it up on a
number of Linux networks without any issues. It also gives you the
advantage of using the same LDAP authentication system for other
services like Web access, SVN access control and any other service with
LDAP authentication hooks.

Management can be handled with PHPLDAPAdmin which has a pretty nice Web
interface for managing an LDAP tree.
--
Smoot Carl-Mitchell
System/Network Architect
smoot@tic.com
+1 480 922 7313
cell: +1 602 421 9005

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06-12-2008, 10:26 PM

what's the current standard for centrally managing accounts in small (under 20
machines) networks? I assume NIS because from what I've read, the overhead of
setting up and managing LDAP based authentication/accounts isn't justified. If
there is another alternative or another way to look at this problem, I would
greatly appreciate hearing about it.

The other question is around managing updates. It would be nice if there was
some automatic or centralized method by which I could update all machines as
appropriate without having to go and log in to every single bloody machine and
spend the better part of a morning doing this task. Ideas?

Thanks in advance for your answers.

---eric

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