Hi,
I'm interested in seeing how Linux computers can be networked together, similar to how Windows computers can be enrolled in an acive directory.

However, I don't know what I should be searching for. All of my search terms ("linux networking server" "linux login server" etc.) either tell me how to connect my computer to the Internet or how to integrate it into a Windows Active Directory.

An example setup (because I don't know how to describe it otherwise): There is one server, and multiple clients. When a user logs in to a client, it checks username/password with the server. Once logged in, the user can access a directory on the server as his/her /home directory.

At this point, I'm not going to be seetting up such a server; I'm just interested in reading about how it's done.

Thanks.

I would say there are several different approaches. First, AD is available using samba. Next you can try to read about NIS: http://linux-nis.org/
also check nsswitch: http://linux.die.net/man/5/nsswitch.conf

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The direct corollary to Active Directory is LDAP.

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An interesting article here: http://opensource.com/business/14/5/...mplementations

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AD ist a set of processes and services that use LDAP to store data.

LDAP itself is just a an open-standard-protocol to connect to an unspecific directory-database. There are approaches to use it as a NIS, see RFC 2307.

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