[Lias] pGina for authenticating windows against practically anything...

[Gary Reynolds]

Hi everyone,

In my role here at the University of Sydney, I've been lucky enough to 
be forced into learning about LDAP about 2-3 years ago for the 
authentication of our website.  One of the real problems I had was the 
inability to use the accounts in the directory for authenticating 
windows machines.

I have no need for a PDC, we only want a workgroup, so I wasn't really 
prepared to setup samba and have to go through the whole process of 
adding machines to the domain, yada yada. I need windows file sharing 
from a central server which samba is dealing with quite well. I know 
samba can be configured to use ldap, but had no real joy there (plus 
the extra schema and attributes i'd have to add to the directory aren't 
worth the effort).

Enter pGina as a replacement for the normal w2k/wxp login window - can 
be configured to use any one of a number of modules, including ldap.  
Now we have students able to actually live in a single signon world (at 
least within our faculty, the university still has a separate login 
system which we will (once the get their global directory sorted) use) 
and life couldn't be sweeter.

I would suggest to all of you to have a peek at this nifty piece of 
work - worth it's weight in gold, and it will really make you want to 
get that directory project you've been thinking about off the ground.

http://pgina.xpasystems.com/

Can also use it to auth against mysql, pop3, pam, nis, etc... or roll 
your own plugin if you have something else.

Cheers,
Gary