LDAP vs. NIS+

[Aly Dharshi]

LDAP is hands down the way to go, even Sun says that NIS+ maybe 
deprecated in future releases, its a freaking pain in the ass. NIS+ is 
no being actively developed for Linux, NIS+ is a good exercise in 
self-inflicted pain (which I will have to go thru' starting 2morrow).

Ashley M. Kirchner wrote:
> 
>    Once again I turn to the smart folks on this list.  I'm looking for a 
> way to centralize our user management.  At the moment I have user logins 
> that are scattered across several machines.  Ideally I want to have one 
> central "accounts" machine, where all the user LOGIN data is kept and 
> maintained.  Then I would have a shell server, where their actual files 
> are kept.  Users then connect to this shell server only (which then 
> authenticates the user against the "accounts" machine before letting 
> them on.)  I will also have a web server and mail spool server which 
> will have NFS shares, and all of these will have to have some record of 
> the user information (UID/GID at the very least) for things to work 
> properly.  That data should be coming from the central "accounts" 
> machine I would think.
> 
>    I heard that NIS+ can do what I want to do.  At the same time, I also 
> heard LDAP may be what I want.  So which is which?  What should I 
> consider using?  Considering that neither is something I've played with 
> extensively (I've done some NIS+ stuff eons ago, but never LDAP) this 
> would be a first for me and having to figure things out from the ground up.
> 
>    What does the general public recommend?  And any pointers/suggestions 
> you might have are also welcome.
> 

-- 
Aly Dharshi
aly.dharshi at telus.net

          "A good speech is like a good dress
           that's short enough to be interesting
           and long enough to cover the subject"