[Samba] Authentication with Multi-OS Environment

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> I'm being asked to come up with an all-in-one fileserver solution which
> will serve the following operating systems as client machines:
> -          Windows
> -          Linux
> -          AIX
> -          SGI
> -          HP-UX
> My first thought was Samba, but I'm wondering about how authentication
> will work.
> I'm pretty sure the Windows machines will be using Active Directory,
> which I see that Samba now supports. Does anyone have experience with
> using the other operating systems above as client machines?

The other clients can use AD (Kerberos) or LDAP.

> -          What kind of authentication mechanism is normally used?

LDAP or Kerberos. Or if they support PAM/NSS they can use winbind for
authentication.

All this is well documented in the *OFFICIAL* Samba docs.

> -          I understand that "net use" can be used with Windows clients
> to mount Samba shares, so I'm assuming that no client software needs to
> be installed or configured on Windows clients. 

No software is installed.

> What about the other operating systems?

AFAIK, only LINUX can mount a CIFS/SMB share.  So a Samba server won't
do you much good with an AIX, HPUX, or IRIX client.

-- 
Adam Tauno Williams, Network & Systems Administrator
Consultant - http://www.whitemiceconsulting.com
Developer - http://www.opengroupware.org