[K12OSN] NEW HOWTO - Setup a Simple Application Server - PART V

[Josiah Ritchie]

On Fri, 2004-08-06 at 12:01, Shawn Powers wrote:
> Josiah Ritchie said:
> > LDAP is a great backend for what you want to do, plus you can use pgina
> > to authenticate your XP boxes to it so you'll have one authentication
> > database for everything XP and Linux. It might also work for W2000, etc.
> 
> Ya know -- I REALLY wanted to implement LDAP this year, but it's still
> above my comprehension.  *sigh*  Maybe I've been using /etc/passwd and
> such for too many years.  NIS has worked great for me, (and the pgina_pam
> application for windows authentication off the linux accounts) and I don't
> understand how to actually administer the LDAP accounts...
> 
> Maybe next year.  This year, when I was trying to get LDAP working, I
> *did* get authentication to work with the one or two accounts I
> painstakingly added by hand -- but I just don't get how to add hundreds of
> users to the LDAP database, and have everything (home directories created,
> etc) just work.  Ironically, the samba integration part, for me, isn't the
> big problem. :)
> 
> One of the wonderful things about OpenSource -- I don't HAVE to do either,
> I have the choice. :)   (but boy do I ever want to get LDAP working -- for
> the bonus addressbook if nothing else!)

Sounds like you just about had it. I use phpldapadmin to setup a website
interface for managing the LDAP db and have been impressed with it. I
bet your big problem was just w/ ACLs. At least that was what I had to
struggle through (and for that matter still am).

As far as converting data in, that I'm not sure I'd be able to help
with. I had a small database of students and just decided to have them
all reapply as the old db needed cleaning anyway. :-)

Our student office is going to handle the actually entry. I was rather
surprised to get that, but very happy to not have to personally enter
each one in by hand. :-)

JSR/