Kerberos alternative

oly_r · 02-02-2012, 12:06 PM

I have recently changed jobs and where i used to work we had kerberos. Here they have nothing resembling central password management or Network Authentication. I have started looking at LDAP but wonder if that is a good choice. we have a solaris/centos environment. What would you recommend.

acid_kewpie · 02-02-2012, 12:15 PM

I prefer LDAP to Kerberos for authentication by a long way, it's not at all confusing to understand, unlike kerberos and it's TGT's and all that.

LDAP provides a point in time, one off authentication to a server, there is no membership to be part of etc. Very simple, especially as you need somewhere for the central user info to live, so LDAP can do both things in one. What did you used to use for this when kerberos did the authentication? nis?

oly_r · 02-02-2012, 12:23 PM

I was at that location for almost 8 years so it has been a while since i had to even think about this. I have used NIS in the past (long past). That is why i was asking here, it seemed that LDAP would be a valid choice but i wanted to make sure i wasn't missing something else. And hoping that there might be some recommended resources for getting started with ldap.

acid_kewpie · 02-02-2012, 12:31 PM

well I'd say OpenLDAP 2.4 and the relevant documentation, especially this http://www.zytrax.com/books/ldap/

You can look at a more "enterprise" LDAP solution using 389ds, RHDS or Centos DS (all the same thing really...) but I think it blows...