Centralized management of a small Linux network...
 

Hello, some of us at my high school have considered setting up a small Linux computer lab (around maybe 10 comps at most, and maybe a server). The idea is to simply provide a bit of exposure to Linux in an otherwise all Windows environment.

The concern here is central control of the users. We need to be able to allow people to log on as they normally would to the rest of the network, and be able to give them rights, ban them, etc. We have a Win2k03 domain in place already. I was considering possibly setting up Samba to run as a member of the domain, or maybe setting up a different domain with a trust between it and the main Win2k03 one, but I have never attempted this with Samba before.

Also, what distro would you guys recommend for something like this? I was thinking maybe RedHat or SuSE, possibly with purchased support (we would have some money for a possible academic licence).

Thanks for any ideas here; I've worked with Linux for a while now, but haven't tried anything like this before.

I would look into doing exactly as you said, and use samba and winbind to auth to the windows domain. Look into webmin http://www.webmin.com/intro.html for management of the linux machines.

I would suggest Redhat, only since I'm familiar with it. And I would go for the work station release and maybe get an additional year RHN entitlement so you can get updates. RHN can manage all servers packages from the web and also do automatic scheduled updates.

Also, look into faterm and fanout. They're freakin cool if you have set up ssh keys and the agent.

Using linux as file server is always possible but if you really want to make an impression try using LTSP.

LTSP is a linux project which is a terminal server concept.
The user software is installed on the server and the client (windows and linux) make a vnc connection to run that software.
Linux clients don´t even need a harddisk to run vnc software they can make a network boot from the server.


http://www.k12ltsp.org/

I considered using LTSP, but I think that I am going to go the Samba route and have the computers members of the Windoze domain. We need some processing power on the clients themselves, for programming. And we need people to be able to have access to their normal accounts.