Best way to centralize authentication in a home network

xyphor · 03-17-2006, 09:29 PM

I took the plunge and bought my three kids new PCs, all of which will be running Linux (FC5 to be exact). I'm looking for something I would call "kerberos-lite"; so we can all have our authentication be transparent from machine to machine. Is it really necessary to set up a KDC and and OpenLDAP server for such such a thing? I've read that Samba 4 can act as a mini active directory server, but I'd rather stick to distro packages if possible.

Any suggestions?

Thanks! :-)

Brady

Matir · 03-17-2006, 09:54 PM

I think, but I am not sure, that you could do it all with just LDAP. Realistically, I would just run SSHD on all the machines and use some scripts to do some form of remote administration. LDAP would be good learning experience, but probably a bit overkill. Do you plan to NFS mount home directories, so that anyone can do basically anything from anywhere?

xyphor · 03-17-2006, 10:01 PM

Yes, I should have been more specific...I would like to have NFS mounted home dirs and general access shares. LDAP will give me a centralized location for user info and credentials, but I really like the token/ticket concept in Kerberos. Maybe key-based ssh with LDAP would do the trick. Hmmmm....

Matir · 03-17-2006, 10:39 PM

Well, if you 'really like the token/ticket concept' of Kerberos, there's really not many other options available.