Automatic Account Creation

[Ryan Golhar]

Hi all, 

I need your opinion...

I have a set of linux machines that authenticate users via LDAP.  Their
home directories are mounted via NFS share.  All the machines are RedHat
Enterprise 3 Workstations (plus Server for LDAP and NFS)

Anytime a new user comes in and needs an account, they have to see an
administrator who runs a script that checks the users id against an
institution wide system.  If they are a valid user within the
institution, an account is created for them and they get their password,
ie an entry is created in LDAP for them and a home directory is created.

It works well, but I want to do away with the intermediate step of them
having to see an administrator.  Ideally, I want them to be able to sit
down at a machine, and log in using some username that will either
verify who they are and create the account for them, or they attempt to
log in using their institution user id and the system sees they aren't a
user but proceeds to verify who they are and create an account.

Has anyone done anything like this?  

Ryan