Re: [seul-edu] Linux computer lab

["Jay Sun" <js9s@lycos.com>]

 NIS is the thing to go.  It does not support certain type of encryption (md5, etc.), but it does support other type of encryption, cypt for instance.  The way it works is that nis has a central password file, and push the file to every machine. When user login in to a machine, the password is not sent over the network, but is compared with the local copy. So all NIS does is to keep everything the same across ervery machine. 

J.

--

On Tue, 24 Apr 2001 17:04:31  
 Greg wrote:
>I'm helping my mom, a teacher in a Detroit-area school system, set up and run 
>a network of about 25 linux machines.  She's teaching C++ (and eventually 
>Java next year), and Linux looked attractive because it's A) free.  B) 
>stable. C) fast. D) runs well on old hardware.  
>
>This year, we installed Mandrake 7.1 and it worked reasonably well.  RPMs are 
>an administrative nightmare (in my opinion), so I'm going to switch to Debian 
>2.2 this summer.  My brother set up the networking infrastructure at the 
>beginning of the school year and I'm a little hazy on the details.  I know 
>it's rather complicated and doesn't function quite the way we'd like it to.  
>I have been charged with the task of finding a simple, effective replacement.
>
>I'd like all of the home directories to be stored on a central server so that 
>each student can access his/her data from any of the other 24 terminals.  
>Ideally, it would automatically mount the directories when they log in, and 
>unmount on logout.  However, I'd rather not have unencrypted passwords flying 
>over our network, so some form of encryption would be desired.
>
>I've heard that NIS works well, but does not support encryption (easily).  
>Does anyone else know of a good, simple solution?  Thanks.
>
>--Greg
>
>


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