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