[Freeipa-users] General question about FreeIPA : roaming profiles in a school?

[Niki Kovacs]

Hi,

I'm an Austrian Linux user living in South France, and I recently
installed a 100% Linux computer room in a school here. Currently every
machine only has one "public" user, and then every single user (teacher
as well as student) has his own directory on a Samba File server. This
is an intermediary solution, while I try to get a grasp on configuring
roaming profiles. The server is running CentOS 5.5 (headless, e. g.
without X), and the desktops are either a personal mix of CentOS and
Fedora, or openSUSE 11.3.

I've spent some time wading through LDAP, NFS, NIS, Samba and autofs
documentation and the various mixes of these, but it all seems like a
mysterious mess.

Someone from the CentOS mailing list suggested I take a peek on FreeIPA.
So I took a look on the website, and now I thought I'd simply ask on
this list. 

Here's basically what I need.

1) One simple server, running CentOS 5.5. All the user accounts
(teachers, students) should be managed centrally on the server.

2) All the user data are stored centrally on the server, preferably with
quotas (for example max. 1 GB per user). 

3) Ideally every user should be able to connect to his or her account
from any client machine in the computer room. 

4) Ideally, this solution should work for both CentOS 5.5 and openSUSE
11.3 client machines. 

5) Ideally, users can be managed (added / removed) graphically through
some dedicated tool, so I can leave this to someone who doesn't
necessarily have system administration skills.

6) Ideally, the whole setup should not be a nightmare to secure.

So here's my simple question : is FreeIPA the right tool for this ? Can
it do all these things without me having to jump through burning
loops ? 

I'm no lamer for RTFM, so if you simply say "yes, it is", I'll happily
dive into the documentation. 

Cheers from the storm-swept South of France,

Niki Kovacs