Client LDAP Authentication

[Joe Brouhard]

I know this has been throught about already, but i want to see if I
have the right train of thought here.

1) Linux client authentication

Linux clients can authenticate against a master server using NIS as it
stands.    Doing a little research, I discovered that NIS can be tied
directly into a LDAP-compatible protocol.  Seems some universities use
this trick to authenticate Linux machines to a Microsoft Active
Directory server.  (Don't ask me how or why...)

I'm thinking that a NIS package can be modified or possibly an extra
package (nis-ldap) be constructed that ties NIS directly into LDAP.
This could provide LDAP authentication out of the box.

2) Windows client authentication.

I know a lot of us would like to avoid this one, but if anyone wants
the Ubuntu Server to truely succeed, it needs to be cross-platform
compatible.  Meaning it needs to reach the masses as well.

Best way I can think of is to tie SAMBA directly into LDAP and have
Samba act as a NT Primary Domain Controller.  This is the only way I
can think of that would work right now.  Like my first suggestion, a
samba-ldap-server package could work for this out of the box.

Am I on the right track here?

-- 
Joe Brouhard
jbrouhard at gmail.com