On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 5:04 PM, Nathan Moore <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I'm using NIS (or have been at least) because I'm not a full-time sysadmin.
> The cluster (~5 machines) is only used for teaching, its behind a firewall,
> and there's nothing important stored on it.  NIS was the easiest thing that
> allowed for shared home directories & logins at the time (without spending
> two weeks learning LDAP...)
>
> Is LDAP easy to configure?

That seems a very reasonable reason to use NIS. It's important in your
own models of how things really work to segregate authentication,
which can use Kerberos or SSH keys or many other tools, and which many
people incorrectly assume is an inherent part of LDAP. Samba Windows
AD, and the "sssd" tools built into SL all are designed to use
Kerberos for authentication. It's the account management, that can be
as simple or complex as you want them to be, along with automounting
tables and hosts, both of which are built into NIS by default.

These days, where possible, I use Samba for a full AD replacement. It
takes longer to set up in the first place than NIS, but it's far more
flexible and cross platform. And current Samba releases provide far
more well structured control than the ordinary "dood, just set up
LDAP!!! I found a Google page!!!!!" that I've run into repeatedly.

                       Nico Kadel-Garcia