brainstorming for UDS-N - Cloud Infrastructure

[Clint Byrum]

On Sep 28, 2010, at 1:02 PM, Adam Sommer wrote:

> For me a priority is easy setup of Directory Services :-).
> 

I'd like to expand on that even more, and say that we need to
champion and document the setup of "Something that works like Active
Directory".

One of the most common questions that I see go unanswered in
#ubuntu-server is "How do I do what Active Directory does on Ubuntu?"

Its always left me wanting more when well meaning people just throw
back something like "Well ActiveDirectory is just LDAP and kerberos
with DNS". I think this misses the much bigger issue that ActiveDirectory
ties them all together in a usable framework, with a cohesive
interface for management.

Case in point, this section of the Ubuntu server guide:

https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/serverguide/C/network-authentication.html

Its all well written, great documentation on how to get Kerberos,
OpenLDAP, etc. configured. But none of it actually tells a user
"This is the way WE would do it." This document is full of choices
that a good admin must make. But to me, if they're at that page,
they're already spending time doing something that isn't what they
intend to do with Ubuntu, which is to grow their business, teach
their students, share their music with the neighbors, etc. etc.

Open source is about choices, and to me, Ubuntu is about giving
users a default experience that relieves them from the pressure to
make hard choices, so they can get started with what they actually
want to do.