[K12OSN] smbldap and webmin on Debian

[R. Scott Belford]

Craig White wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-11-07 at 13:45 -0500, Rob Owens wrote:
>> I have a home installation of Debian Etch and have successfully used the
>> smbldap-installer scripts.  I was never successful in getting webmin to
>> work properly as far as adding/modifying users.  Does anybody have any
>> success stories or advice for me? 
>>
>> I think I must be missing some important settings in the "LDAP users and
>> groups" module configuration.  Even if somebody could tell me "yes, I
>> use smbldap and webmin on debian etch" but offer no advice, that would
>> at least give me hope...
> ----
> I use it extensively and have left the setup behind for people to
> maintain in clients offices as well.  It is my primary tool for
> maintaining users/groups.
> 
> My personal observation is that some people expect these tools to just
> work without actually having to learn/understand/use/recover ldap.
> 
> You got questions...post them up.
> 
> Personally, I think that if you haven't read 'LDAP System
> Administration' by Gerald Carter, and cannot add/modify/delete using
> ldapadd/ldapmodify/ldapdelete, cannot search from command line tool
> ldapsearch, cannot backup & restore using command line slapcat/slapadd
> has no business committing their authentication system to LDAP because
> they are certain to demonstrate to their co-workers how vulnerable they
> are.

I think you are dead on with this last comment, Greg.  However, the 
success of other platforms has been that they build front-ends around 
the oft-intimidating command line.  For some their aptitude drops 
exponentially when the terminal opens.

I am perpetually in search of the tool that does this well for the 
growing install base of desktops, fat clients, thin clients, etc.  It is 
a glaring hole in this and the edubuntu project.  Skolelinux nailed it 
pretty well in the beginning.  Webmin rocks, but ...

Miru(1) came across my radar recently while hunting down good Edubuntu 
documentation(2).

> 
> Craig

--scott

(1) http://developer.novell.com/wiki/index.php/Miru_directory_server
(2) 
http://developer.novell.com/wiki/index.php/Feisty/Ocean_post_install_checklist