NIS and mixing distros

[P Jones]

Hi all;

I have a Centos 4.1 server and three FC4 workstations in my little
network. I just started using NIS for authentication and NFS for /home
serving. For fun I did a quick Ubuntu install on one machine, and ran
into the wall when it came to differences between groups/GIDs. For
example, Debian has the audio group GID 29, and RH/FC has rpcusers at
29, and RH/FC doesn't seem to have an audio group, so my Ubuntu
machine user couldn't get access to the sound card unless I granted
access using pam_group on the client. I like the idea of NOT having to
touch the client, just controlling access from the server.

I'm wondering if others have built mixed networks and run into this
problem, and what can be done about it. It seems that in order for
things to work right one needs to go with Redhat on the server and
Redhat on the desktop, or Debian on the server and Debian on the
dekstop, but that mixing won't work right.

Another very wierd thing was that before I was using NIS and just
using NFS for /home, even if I set UIDs and usernames and GIDs and
group names to be the same on the Centos server and the Ubuntu
workstation, the Ubuntu machine couldn't get access to some
directories I was attempting to share with NFS. Then I switched on NIS
and they worked.

-P