NIS for Win95?

[Elfredy V. Cadapan]

On Sun, 5 Oct 1997, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:

> On Mon, 6 Oct 1997, Elfredy V. Cadapan wrote:

> > I recall someone on this list running an Internet cafe using samba
> > servers...

> me!  me!  (there's someone else, too.  check the digests.  he wanted a 
> "kickoff" time).

Yes... I'm actually going to run a student lab, not a cafe, but the
requirements are basically the same... I want a kickoff time too. (Am I
getting too demanding? :)

> > I need to do something similar. The setup I want:
> > Several Win95 terminals with their logins authenticated off a Unix
> > (preferably Linux) box. No NT servers as either clients or servers, just
> > Win95 and a Linux or Solaris box. 
> linux is cheaper.  we use FreeBSD here.

I've been using Samba for the past year and a half on Solaris and Linux,
so if I can find a Samba-based solution, that'll be great. My users are
currently on Solaris. They've been using dos-only terminals telnetted into
the Solaris box, but we're upgrading to Win95-capable PCs in a few
months... 

> samba will do domain logins for w95, and has done so for about... 
> eighteen months, so you won't need NIS or Kerberos on the w95 machines:
> just use samba.  on your samba system, you user database can be NIS or 
> Kerberos, but that's nothing to do with w95.

I've only recently upgraded from 1.9.16p9 here, so I haven't played around
with domain logons yet. Must investigate...
The staff PCs have been running off samba happily for the past year or so,
though I haven't tried authenticating off the samba server. (just mounting
[homes] and such, share-level security).
 
> > Are there any freeware (preferably) clients out there that do this? 

> i'd like to get people motivated to write one.  anyone interested in
> helping out, financially?  you get a freely available SMB client, and you
> get to help take control of CIFS development away from microsoft (they
> currently own 95% of the clients, namely w95 and NT, and therefore totally
> control CIFS development)

:) I don't get paid for doing this, either... but maybe I can get one of
my brighter students on this... (or do it myself when I get more time).
I imagine something like this would be snapped up by the dozens of
Internet cafes around here (most of whom use NT).

> > I'm also interested in how other people handle such a setup. Ideally,
> > someone shouldn't be able to walk in and login without a valid account on
> > the Unix box.
> 
> or do what we have here, which is to issue a "guest" account, with the 
> password posted on the wall.  normally, the machines are left logged in 
> with the guest account.

Yep. This is what we have now. Unfortunately, these are staff and students
who don't pay by the hour, so they tend to park themselves behind a
terminal for four to six hours at a time. (which is why I'd like a
"kickoff" feature, but I'd settle for authentication and logging...)
 
> watch out for making things over-complicated, though: if your users can't 
> do things without asking you questions, they'll go somewhere else.

That's fine... here, they can't go anywhere else. ;)
What I don't want are students (or non-students) who don't have legitimate
accounts walking in and using the facilities... 
I'll probably fall back on a manual system (get a 2-hour ticket, give
ticket to student assistant-cum-bouncer on duty, etc.) while I look for
other choices.

> > If there isn't anything like this, my only choice would be to install an
> > NT server solely for authentication (as all my users are currently on
> > Solaris, I hate the prospect of migrating everybody over to NT, or
> > maintaining duplicate password lists)
> yuk.

Exactly. 

 Elfredy Cadapan                  
  Computer Science Instructor and Professional Nerd 
  Institute of Computer Science, UP at Los Banos               
  Home page : http://www.uplb.edu.ph/~evc/