I've noticed a growing adoption of SSSD driven openIPA (or the quasi-proprietary equivalent) as an administrative tool.
Is anybody aware of packages for these projects? I've checked Current/AlienBobs/Slackbuilds, nothing under SSSD or openIPA, are these packages out there and I'm just not aware of it? I spoke at length with Mr. Googles on the subject, however he was no help either.
A quick review of the SSSD documentation suggests it might be fairly easy to build in our environment (boy, that sure sounds like 'famous last words', doesn't it?'). I'd be happy to see if I could do it but I don't want to reinvent a wheel someone else has already built.

I assume you mean freeipa, which is a redhat/fedora project. I would say it is unlikely to work as a freeipa server on slackware, though maybe if you just need a freeipa client you maybe, possibly, with some work, get it running.

See this ticket for Debian support, started in 2012 and still not done.
https://fedorahosted.org/freeipa/ticket/2453

Arch has an AUR package for it, but it is only for client, with some caveats, so my guess is with both of these statements, getting it to work on Slackware would be some work, and there are a decent number of dependencies you would have to build, many from scratch.

You would probably need to install PAM , which is not much of a problem, but it needs certmonger which seems to have a dependency on systemd. Don't know if it would build without it, though it seems you can use certmonger without systemd from a quick glance.

We have been using SuSE-based clients with users logging in and mounting their home directories at login time.

I have a host of Slackware-based stations that I would love to join this mechanism. Over the years, I made a few half-hearted attempts at this, but the complexity of the alphabet soup of LDAP/AD/PAM/SSSD/Kerberos has always defeated me. I have just discovered this guide:
h t t p: // karellen. blogspot. ca /2014/03/mit-kerberos-for-slackware.html
that took me further than ever: I have now a client that can provide Kerberos authentication of the incoming user without a problem. However, the rest of the login process requires PAM and, specifically, pam_sss.so to be in place, to couple to sssd etc. This functionality is missing in the packages used in the above blog:

h t t p : // www .linux-pam. org / library/Linux-PAM-1.1.8.tar.bz2
pam_krb5-2.3.1-3+ldap.tgz

Any suggestion on how I can complete my quest? pam_sss does not seem to exist anywhere in the Slackware world...