What's the best way to centralize user management on Linux

[yyghp]

I have more than 10 Linux servers here, I need to centralize the user management for all the servers, then I don't have to change the passwords on all servers at the time I need to modify users...

What's the best way to implement this on Linux?
Thanks !

[Stuart Browne]

There are two real ways of centralizing user information:

* Using NIS/NIS+ (previously known as 'yp' (Yellow pages)).

This method is one of the easiest, but also the least flexable.

* Using LDap

This is probably the most flexable, but also probably the hardest to configure.

There are also a number of different ways to store passwords, but that's something else.

At any time, you can change method of user information storage using Pam. If you're on a RedHat box, there's the nice 'authconfig' interface to help you with that.

There are HOWTO's on how to set these up all over the place, but get back to us if you have further questions.

[Naveej.K.A]

Hi,

I would go with LDAP!!!

Regards,
Naveej

[Gopi Sekar]

I would recommend LDAP. It has more flexibility, although not so easy to configure.

but there are few graphical tools available in linux to manage LDAP servers. gqview is one of them.

Hope this helps,
Gopi

[Reiß, Thomas]

Would you like a easy Interface you can take a Look at Novell's EDirectory (or Novell Open Enterprise Server with Linux Kernel).

It have a LDAP-Interface, you can admin with a Java Console or (in Open Enterprise Server) with Web Interface and it's relativ Easy to install.

[yyghp]

Thanks for the quick replies !
there will be more than 200 users involved, is that LDAP still a good choice for that, in comparison with NIS ?
And what's the best way to add 200 users within LDAP ?
Thanks again!

[Stuart Browne · Accepted solution]

Both NIS and LDap are quite happy with many thousands of users (I've heard of 20,000+ users using both methods previously).

As for how to set up LDap for Authentication, start by reading http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LDAP-Implementation-HOWTO/index.html , section 2 in particular.

[Paul Cross_1]

Although both LDAP and NIS will both handle this job nicely, LDAP is considerably more complex. Since this is a relatively small installation, NIS or NIS+ might be better suited to your purposes.

[yyghp]

thanks guys !