<div dir="ltr">Carl, I first set up a centralized LDAP server and home exports some 4 years ago now. We had only 30 clients butI I had five Dual PIII 700 servers that I wanted to spread the load out on. I was a complete noob to linux when I set that up and used the the Fedora K12LTSP distro and ran the Samba/LDAP script without any issues. I even had some windows 2000 boxes authenticating to it for a while. We've scaled up to a single dual quad core Xenon running some 60 clients now and I have kept the separate LDAP box. I have LAM running on it but still use the smbldap-* commands to do just about all of my adding and removal of users. There's even a way for users to change their own passwords now (although I'm not sure this has saved me any time considering my middle schoolers are always changing their passwords to something they can't remember) -Nick <div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 12:59 PM, Carl Keil <<a href="mailto:carl@snarlnet.com">carl@snarlnet.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Hey folks, Starting from scratch, what's the best way to centralize logins and file serving for a mixed group of linux (ubuntu) and Windows XP (home) workstations. The school is also talking about installing a Mac. I'm thinking of trying the Samba/LDAP script on Centos 5 K12LTSP. Is there a better (easier) way to go? How would you do it if you were starting from scratch and actually implementing thin clients was a ways off in your planning? Should I go 64 bit? The server I'm thinking of using is a Pentium D. This needs to serve about 50 students - 10 staff and volunteers 17 workstations mixed Ubuntu / Windows (for now) - possibly all on at the same time. My plan so far is to install Centos 5 K12LTSP on a repurposed workstation with a mirrored software RAID for the home directories. Install backupPC on another repurposed workstation for nightly backups of above. Use the Samba/LDAP script to export /home and provide authentication for everybody. I intend to use LDAP for the school's Joomla site, possibly Moodle, an attendance program, etc. after I get the initial server set up. Any suggestions? Is this overkill for 50 students? We have $0 budget for this. Thank you so much, ck _______________________________________________ K12OSN mailing list <a href="mailto:K12OSN@redhat.com" target="_blank">K12OSN@redhat.com</a> <a href="https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn" target="_blank">https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn</a> For more info see <<a href="http://www.k12os.org" target="_blank">http://www.k12os.org</a>> </blockquote></div> -- Trillium Charter School MS Math & Technology Teacher Technology Coordinator Database Administrator <a href="http://www.trilliumcharterschool.org">www.trilliumcharterschool.org</a> Trillium Charter School is democratically-structured environment that fosters students' natural curiosity, creativity, and self-awareness. Students learn to take initiative and assume responsibility for their own learning, which supports constructive interaction with the local, regional, and global community. </div>