opensource alternatives

[Mike Rambo]

Scott Overfield wrote:
> 
> Good Afternoon,
> Does anyone on the list know if it is possible to create an alternative to
> windows 2000 active directory using open source software, such as samba,
> openldap, kerberosV, openSSL, etc.? Could anyone point me toward any
> documentation that they are aware of? Any help or suggestions
> appreciated......
> 
> ******************************************************
> Scott Overfield
> Network Administrator
> Gratiot County Community Mental Health
> 989-466-4109
> soverfield@gccmha.org

Active Directory is a lot of things - I don't even know them all. Among
them though, is dynamic dns which can be accomplished through the more
recent versions of the ISC bind and dhcp servers (though the M$
implementation, like usual, is at least partly proprietary). AD also has
an M$ version of LDAP for authentication through central servers and
user replication to local servers. Micro$oft and win2k AD support a
proprietary version of kerberos though AFAIK, not ssl. The most recent
verison of samba (2.2.1a) may have finally fixed login from win2k
machines but in no way fully supports all aspects of win2k and AD - NT
style domains aren't even fully supported yet (BDC etc). Hope this helps
some but I'm not really clear on what you're looking to accomplish. Are
you looking for actual interoperation with AD (I'd be interested in
that) or just similar function apart from it.


-- 
Mike Rambo
mrambo@lsd.k12.mi.us