Re: Using LDAP for User authentication

[Dan Newcombe <Newcombe@mordor.clayton.edu>]

On Tue, 1 Apr 2003, Jason Williams wrote:
> First question: Is Samba necessary for LDAP authentication, or is that only
> if you are planning on setting up the server as a PDC?

Samba and LDAP are two seperate things.  Samba has the ability to use LDAP
on the backend if you want.  Samba can be a PDC with or without LDAP.  But
for Unix system authentication, no, Samba is not needed.

> At this point, I am trying to figure out what exactly I need to setup LDAP
> for authentication. Right now, I only have two users on a test machine that
> I am using. I guess my question would be, would would be the easiest way at
> this point to make my test machine start using LDAP for user authentication?

nss_ldap - this is very transparent once your system is setup to support
it.  The libc userid/password calls will use the nss_ldap module to find
users, passwords, etc...

pam_ldap - not as flexible as above...requires PAM support in anything
that may want to deal with userids/passwords.

If you're running this on most modern Linux distros, nss_ldap is probably
an option your can install.