Thanks a million , it works now :) really really appreciate all the help. Best regards --H <div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 4:38 PM, jean-Noël Chardron <<a href="mailto:Jean-Noel.Chardron@dr15.cnrs.fr">Jean-Noel.Chardron@dr15.cnrs.fr</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Hakuna Matata a écrit : <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> This is what it is returning.... i guess i have to rebuild the client with CentOS 5.2 (though i have no reason but still)..... </blockquote> not sure I did a mistake about ldapsearch so I resume the situation : You have a client Centos 5.3 with ip adress : 192.168.5.4 You have a server FDS with ip adress : 192.168.5.1 You have a user in FDS test01 with dn: cn=test01,ou=Users,dc=vfds,dc=local with uid = t01, uid number = 2223, gid = 2223, home dir = /home/test and login shell= /bin/test You want to log in with user test01 on the client station through the FDS server So you check the configuration of the client : /etc/nsswitch is correct /etc/ldap.conf is correct /etc/pam.d/system-auth is correct /etc/pam.d/login is correct you can ping from client to server and vice-versa ok now you have to check the server side, this can be done with the tools ldapsearch, from the client you make a request with ldapsearch to get the information from the FDS server But before this, I didn't see your misconfiguration of the user test01 in the attribute login shell = /bin/test . I see it just now. This attribute must be a valid shell on the client i.e /bin/bash or /bin/sh or what else you want but a valid shell, I don't think that /bin/test permit you to log in the client (on centos5.3 the program /bin/test doesn't exist !!) thus the first thing you can do is to change the attribute login shell from /bin/test to /bin/bash then try to login the station with user t01. For further verification of the server side you can do a request ldapsearch : ldapsearch -x -h 192.168.5.1 -b "dc=vfds,dc=local" 'uid=t01' and show the output -- 389 users mailing list <a href="mailto:389-users@redhat.com" target="_blank">389-users@redhat.com</a> <a href="https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-directory-users" target="_blank">https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-directory-users</a> </blockquote></div>