Debian-LAN: installing a complete network environment

[Andreas B. Mundt]

Hi all,

I would like to point your attention to the Debian-LAN project [1].

Debian-LAN is an approach to simplify installing a complete kerberized
network environment made of Debian machines. It might be used for
schools, small enterprises, associations, (university) work groups or
to install complex test environments.

Debian-LAN provides a way to install a server and various workstation
profiles [2] by providing a FAI [3] config space for the setup.

The system has been presented on DebConf13, slides and recordings are
available [4]. The code is in wheezy-backports [5] or on alioth [6].

If you run systems as described above, give Debian-LAN a try!
Comments and contributions are of course welcome.

Best regards,

Andi


[1] <URL:https://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN>
[2] <URL:https://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN/Setup_A#Machine_Types>
[3] <URL:http://fai-project.org/>
[4] <URL:http://penta.debconf.org/dc13_schedule/events/962.en.html>
[5] <URL:http://packages.debian.org/source/stable-backports/debian-lan-config>
The system's target is always the latest stable Debian release.
[6] <URL:http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/debian-lan.git>

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

Wait, I know? L:et's have it do dynamic DNS, host authentication, and LDAP
based account management, too! And in 20 years, maybe it'll have 1/1000th
the number of users that the Samba suite has right now, for all of that,
especially including robust and tested Kerberos management with already
tested tools!

Sorry to rain on the parade, but Samba's been pretty good at this since
Samba was invented in the early 1990's, and it's pretty stable. It also
plays nicely with other well known network clients and protocols, such as
Windows based and Mac based clients, so there's really no need to re-invent
that wheel specifically in Debian. The Debian ports of Samba re up to date
and quite stable.

Post by Andreas B. Mundt
Hi all,
I would like to point your attention to the Debian-LAN project [1].
Debian-LAN is an approach to simplify installing a complete kerberized
network environment made of Debian machines. It might be used for
schools, small enterprises, associations, (university) work groups or
to install complex test environments.
Debian-LAN provides a way to install a server and various workstation
profiles [2] by providing a FAI [3] config space for the setup.
The system has been presented on DebConf13, slides and recordings are
available [4]. The code is in wheezy-backports [5] or on alioth [6].
If you run systems as described above, give Debian-LAN a try!
Comments and contributions are of course welcome.
Best regards,
Andi
[1] <URL:https://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN>
[2] <URL:https://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN/Setup_A#Machine_Types>
[3] <URL:http://fai-project.org/>
[4] <URL:http://penta.debconf.org/dc13_schedule/events/962.en.html>
http://packages.debian.org/source/stable-backports/debian-lan-config>
The system's target is always the latest stable Debian release.
[6] <URL:http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/debian-lan.git>
--
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[Darko Gavrilovic]

On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 9:28 PM, Nico Kadel-Garcia <***@gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>

Post by Nico Kadel-Garcia
Sorry to rain on the parade, but Samba's been pretty good at this since
Samba was invented in the early 1990's, and it's pretty stable. It also
plays nicely with other well known network clients and protocols, such as
Windows based and Mac based clients, so there's really no need to re-invent
that wheel specifically in Debian. The Debian ports of Samba re up to date
and quite stable.

</snip>

To each his own. I actually like the post and his project idea. Also,
claiming that Samba is the be all and end all to all enterprise client
scenarios out there is a little over stating it. On more a few times
have we have to drop Samba as it proved to be inadequate for the
situation.

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

I've been working with both Kerberos and Samba for 20 years. Writing "Yet
Another Authentication Management Tool(tm)" sounds unappealing, since there
are so many well established and tested ones. I'm actually curious what you
found inadequate about Samba, especially if you used the 4.0.x releases
which have stabilized the LDAP/Kerberos interactions in effective
cross-platform ways.

Now, if our friends over in Debian wanted to improve an underlying Kerberos
tool that's used for both Debian and Scientific Linux and other red Hat
based systems, I'd look at the "authconfig" tool and its /etc/pam.d
interactions, which are very flexible and not well managed. *Try* using
"authconfig" to delete the default enabled "example.com" Kerberos domain
from /etc/krb5.conf, or to manage integraiton with upstream Kerberos
domains, I dare you, Or try preventing "authconfig" from resetting values
which you didn't put in the command line, or getting it to load from an
actual configuration file, or to enable local password expiration. It gets
crazy out there!

But that's not a Kerberos problem, that's an authconfig and pam.d managemnt
problem.

Post by Darko Gavrilovic
To each his own. I actually like the post and his project idea. Also,
claiming that Samba is the be all and end all to all enterprise client
scenarios out there is a little over stating it. On more a few times
have we have to drop Samba as it proved to be inadequate for the
situation.