I've done something a little larger, up to 50 users and found that a hybrid kerberos & LDAP approach worked reasonably well. Kerberos is used for authentication and LDAP is used for the home directory and group info. Some pointers are here: http://del.icio.us/jpschewe/lug.auth Some of these links are related integrating with windows since active directory uses kerberos. Mark Mitchell wrote: > My current network looks like this; > 1. A 'file server' running Debian Stable exporting a media share and > home directories via nfs. Samba was working on here the last time I > had a windows machine on the network., > 2, My old desktop running Debian testing, > 3, My new desktop running Kubuntu. (Thanks, Samir) > 4, I will soon be adding a windows XP machine, that will need to have > access to at least the samba share on the 'file server'. > > I have 4 users. (Parents and two kids), right now, all 4 users have an > account on the old desktop. I just remembered, I might have a couple > logins on the file server for friends to log in from outside the > network. Rarely used, SSH only. > > Keeping /etc/hosts and uid/gid information has become unwieldy. I know > my nfs share is a permissions mess right now, but I need to get the > uid/gid information synced across all the machines before I really > have a hope of getting that cleaned up. > > What system should I learn about that best fits my network size and > the scope of the problem? LDAP? NIS? rsyncing the appropriate files > from a common place? > > Pointers appreciated. > > Mark > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > -- Jon Schewe | http://mtu.net/~jpschewe If you see an attachment named signature.asc, this is my digital signature. See http://www.gnupg.org for more information. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 8:38-39