[Freeipa-users] General question about FreeIPA : roaming profiles in a school?

[Miljan Karadzic]

Hi Niki,

Apart from having to manually maintain user shared folders and quota, 
FreeIPA covers everything pretty well. Plus it comes with many 
additional nice features you might or might not need.

Dig in the documentation and don't hesitate to ask questions in case of 
problems, people here are always helpful. :-)

Regards,
Miljan

On 10/30/10 10:13 AM, Niki Kovacs wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm an Austrian Linux user living in South France, and I recently
> installed a 100% Linux computer room in a school here. Currently every
> machine only has one "public" user, and then every single user (teacher
> as well as student) has his own directory on a Samba File server. This
> is an intermediary solution, while I try to get a grasp on configuring
> roaming profiles. The server is running CentOS 5.5 (headless, e. g.
> without X), and the desktops are either a personal mix of CentOS and
> Fedora, or openSUSE 11.3.
>
> I've spent some time wading through LDAP, NFS, NIS, Samba and autofs
> documentation and the various mixes of these, but it all seems like a
> mysterious mess.
>
> Someone from the CentOS mailing list suggested I take a peek on FreeIPA.
> So I took a look on the website, and now I thought I'd simply ask on
> this list.
>
> Here's basically what I need.
>
> 1) One simple server, running CentOS 5.5. All the user accounts
> (teachers, students) should be managed centrally on the server.
>
> 2) All the user data are stored centrally on the server, preferably with
> quotas (for example max. 1 GB per user).
>
> 3) Ideally every user should be able to connect to his or her account
> from any client machine in the computer room.
>
> 4) Ideally, this solution should work for both CentOS 5.5 and openSUSE
> 11.3 client machines.
>
> 5) Ideally, users can be managed (added / removed) graphically through
> some dedicated tool, so I can leave this to someone who doesn't
> necessarily have system administration skills.
>
> 6) Ideally, the whole setup should not be a nightmare to secure.
>
> So here's my simple question : is FreeIPA the right tool for this ? Can
> it do all these things without me having to jump through burning
> loops ?
>
> I'm no lamer for RTFM, so if you simply say "yes, it is", I'll happily
> dive into the documentation.
>
> Cheers from the storm-swept South of France,
>
> Niki Kovacs
>
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