[Bioclusters] Authentication for clusters

[Michael Edwards]

http://www.idealx.com/downloads/samba3-ldap-howto.pdf

We used these tools to set up the Samba bits.  Setting up the
certificates and getting OpenLDAP to use them was the most difficult
part.  Using these tools, the samba set up was reasonably
straightforward.  As straightforward as Linux ever is, at least.

This also has the nicest management interface I have used, including a
couple of the comercial ones.  It is web based and is a nice
compromise of flexibility and ease of use.

I don't have very much Apple hardware so I did not look at their
directory package.

Even if you get a comercial solution, you're going to have to do some
hacking...  Windows is not designed to use LDAP directly, so you
either have to use some external package that adds that function (like
pGina, or Kerberos) or use something like Samba that translates things
into windows-speak.

On 6/27/06, Luigi Manna <manna at college.usc.edu> wrote:
>
>
> >>> On 6/27/2006 at 7:09 am, in message
> <8d71b5680606270709y361f344fmf037ec69f729bda0 at mail.gmail.com>,
> miedward at gmail.com wrote:
> > Hello Luigi,
> >
> > I recently set up a system like the one you describe (ours works
> with
> > XP, OSX, Linux, and Solaris) and after researching I decided to go
> > with OpenLDAP and Samba.  I personally never found a seamless
> > comercial solution I was happy with and at least with the open
> source
> > tools you weren't dealing with yet another black box.
>
>    Samba + OpenLDAP last time I checked was very difficult to implement
> with little management tools .. some sort of arcane art !
> One of the Samba developers during a a Samba tutorials actually showed
> us how complicated this is. Is your solution using certificates and SSL
> ? Someone suggested using Mac OS X, did you look into that ?
>
> >
> > Since you asked on this list, were you looking for a solution that
> is
> > going to be scalable to a large cluster, or is this just for your
> > servers and workstations?
> >
>
>   I need a solution scalable to a 64 node cluster and maybe more even
> though I think 2 LDAP/AD/eDirectory/ would suffice. The solution needs
> to be also easy to manage since personnel is scarce.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Luigi--
>
> > Mike Edwards
> > UTSA/UTHSCSA Joint Computational Biology Facility
> >
> > On 6/26/06, Joe Landman <landman at scalableinformatics.com> wrote:
> >> Hi Luigi
> >>
> >> Luigi Manna wrote:
> >> > Hi,
> >> >
> >> >  I am new on the list but not new with Bioclusters. I am trying
> to
> >> > setup an authentication system for our 64 node cluster that
> integrates
> >> > with our web services (all Apache/PHP based) and our desktop
> management
> >> > (mix of XP, Mac OS X and Linux). At the moment there's no
> authentication
> >> > platform for any of these (other then local files).
> >>
> >> Hmmm...
> >>
> >> > Is there a
> >> > commercial solution that you might recommend that integrates
> >> > authentication among all these plaforms ? I checked on Vintela
> and
> >> > Novell but I wanted to know what other people are doing. I could
> just
> >> > run a secure OpenLDAP but its management tools leave much to be
> >> > desidered and our management prefers commercial tools for
> businees
> >> > continuity purposes.
> >>
> >> There are a variety of directory server products out there.  Fedora
> >> Directory Server is available from RedHat.  LDAP with a nice
> java-ish
> >> user interface.  Sun has a directory server available, as do Novell,
> and
> >> many others, including Microsoft.  Linux,OSX,XP can/should be able
> to
> >> integrate with all of these.  There are others as well.
> >>
> >> Simply depends upon how hard you want to work, how much you want to
> >> spend on fancy tools.
> >>
> >> >
> >> > Any ideas ? Thanks much,
> >> >
> >> > Luigi--
> >> > _______________________________________________
> >> > Bioclusters maillist  -  Bioclusters at bioinformatics.org
> >> > https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/bioclusters
> >>
> >> --
> >> Joseph Landman, Ph.D
> >> Founder and CEO
> >> Scalable Informatics LLC,
> >> email: landman at scalableinformatics.com
> >> web  : http://www.scalableinformatics.com
> >> phone: +1 734 786 8423
> >> fax  : +1 734 786 8452 or +1 866 888 3112
> >> cell : +1 734 612 4615
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Bioclusters maillist  -  Bioclusters at bioinformatics.org
> >> https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/bioclusters
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bioclusters maillist  -  Bioclusters at bioinformatics.org
> > https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/bioclusters
>