samba - Jun 2007 - Authentication with Multi-OS Environment

Hello All,

 

I'm coming back to working with Samba after not having touched for 5
years or so. Samba itself has grown quite a bit from the looks of
things, and I've definitely forgotten a lot of things in the meantime,
so this re-introduction is bound to be interesting.

 

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?

 

-          What kind of authentication mechanism is normally used?

-          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. What about the other
operating systems?

 

That's all I can think of for now.

Thanks in advance for any information.

 

Best Regards,
Shawn Gray

> 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