Looking for advise about "domain controllers" on Linux

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#1

Hello.

I’m not sure if this is the good subforum to post this, but I after seeign the other ones I found it kind of the best fitting. If I’m wrong sorry and please correct me.

I’m in need of implementing a Linux server for storing the users of all PC’s -workstations- in an office, in order for each one to be able to log in with any of the users stored in such server through network. Like a centralized server for authentication, or sort of… The workstations are all Windows PC’s for now, but I’d also like to think about a remote future possibility of some Linux/Unix workstations as well, just in case.
I’ve already read a bit about using openLDAP and Samba, or even Samba alone since it now has active directory functions since version 4.0.

But not only that. I’d like that server to be able to store each user’s data as well -documents, mail accounts, user’s profile information if possible, etc-, so each user could load and write them from and to the server.

  1. Can all of it be done through openLDAP and/or Samba? If not, what would be a good way?

  2. If openLDAP and Samba are good approaches, what differences are there between openLDAP-Samba and Samba alone? Which way would be more advisable?

Thanks very much beforehand for your help.

#2

Not sure whether you can use OpenLDAP with Samba which used to have its own implementation of LDAP (but I may be out of date). However, each user can have their own directory and you can choose whether they can share files.