| Supporting Active Directory on Linux desktops |
Sep. 18, 2006
In a recent article, Ted Haeger, director of Novell user communities asks the question: Can Linux Desktops Live in an Active Directory (AD) world? For most businesses, that's not a question, it's a demand: How do I get Linux desktops to work with Active Directory.
You may swear by LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) or use Novell's own eDirectory, but the simple business truth is that most Windows-based offices of any size use AD (Active Directory) for authentication, security, and management. Therefore, if the Linux desktop is going to get anywhere in most enterprises, it needs AD interoperability.
Fortunately, Samba, every Linux user's favorite way to get to Windows network resources, has supported AD since version 3.0 was released in 2003. Since then, its AD support has only gotten stronger. The latest stable release, 3.0.23c, which came out on September 1st, does the best job yet.
Samba doesn't support everything in AD. Perhaps the most significant lack is that it doesn't support roaming profiles.
A roaming profile is a Windows thin-client variation. With it, you can synchronize your desktop Profile -- think a combination of desktop settings and your home directory -- with a copy of your Profile on a file server. Then, when you log onto another PC in the same AD tree, you'll still get your familiar desktop and files.
Of course, with the use of a Linux thin-client, say 2X Software Ltd.'s 2X TerminalServer or the open-source Linux Terminal Server Project, you can get the same results without worrying about your network directory.
For most offices, Samba should do the trick. In his tale, Haeger gives a step-by-step guide to how to do it with SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 10. It's a lot easier to do in SLED than it in most Linux distributions. That's because Novell has made a big point of having SLED be as easy a drop-in replacement for Windows 2000 or XP offices as possible.
You get the same results in other distributions, with up-to-date copies of Samba, but it will tend to require more elbow grease and manual edits of Samba configuration files. If that's not for you, there are also commercial Linux/AD management programs, like Centeris's Likewise Management Suite 2 and Centrify's Centrify DirectControl Suite 3, that can do the job.
There are also many network management companies that support Samba and AD integration.
Frankly, though, even without SLED, if you understand network directories, you can probably do it yourself. For some pointers check out two of my earlier articles on this subject:
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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