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Date:      Sat, 15 Feb 2003 09:07:57 -0500
From:      Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com>
To:        BSD Freak <bsd-freak@mbox.com.au>
Cc:        FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: A modern BSD UNIX workgroup - how would you do it?
Message-ID:  <3E4E49BD.9080106@potentialtech.com>
References:  <27c344427c532e.27c532e27c3444@mbox.com.au>

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BSD Freak wrote:
> I have an upcoming project to create a modern UNIX (mainly
> FreeBSD-based) workgroup computing environment.
> 
> If _YOU_ had your chance to do it from scratch, what technologies would
> you use? Basically only following are set in stone. Everything else is
> up to me:
> 
> 1. Centralised user/password/account management 
> 2. 2-3 file servers running FreeBSD, 1 mail server and 1 VPN gateway
> also running FreeBSD
> 3. Workstations will be 75% FreeBSD and 25% Mac OS X 10.2
> 
> Most people I have spoken to automatically say NIS/NFS. Although I know
> that NIS/NFS is a tried and true combination, I can't help but feel
> there must be a better way to do a modern BSD UNIX environment. As silly
> as it may sound I am seriously thinking about running Samba for file
> sharing services even though this is a fully UNIX environment.
> Reasons for this include excellent performance on FreeBSD and better
> security than NFS.
> 
> Some of the other authentication/account management technologies I'm
> evaluating include LDAP and Kerberos. Any and comments/suggestions would
> be very well received...
> 
> Basically what I'm asking is if you could do it all over from scratch
> how would you do a modern BSD UNIX workgroup?

If (and it's a fairly large "if") nss_ldap was supported by FreeBSD, and
if ldap authentication were supported by MacOS X, then I would go with
LDAP.
But 4.X doesn't support nss_ldap, and I'm not even sure if 5.x does yet.
I have no clue whether MacOS X does or not.
Unless I had a concern about someone sniffing my local network, I'd use
NFS for file sharing.  I think it's still the cleanest, even if it's not
the fastest.

In the more practical sense.  It's probably still best to go with NIS,
as it seems to be the most supported at this time.  I still like NFS
for file-sharing, although SMB is a viable option.

YMMV

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com


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