Quick and dirty user management service for Linux VMs?

Posted by quack quixote on Super User See other posts from Super User or by quack quixote
Published on 2010-04-25T07:24:12Z Indexed on 2010/04/25 7:33 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 242

Filed under:

linux

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virtual-machine

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user-accounts

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management

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tutorial

Background
I have a home server running Debian, and a workstation that runs various VirtualBox VMs (mostly Linuxen but some Windows).

At the moment, I'm creating my main user account anew for every new Linux VM. I'd like to make use of a centralized user-management scheme instead, so I can just configure the new VMs for the directory technology and let them handle user lookups automatically.

The last time I worked with anything like this, NIS+ was still in fashion. I have a vague notion of what LDAP and Active Directory are, but no knowledge of how to configure them for what I want.

Question
What user-management/network-directory technology should I use for providing user accounts to my network?

The server must run on Debian Lenny.
Client configuration should be simple point-at-server-and-go.
I need an example configuration for one sample user account.
(nice-to-have) I may want to mount the user's home directory from the server.
(nice-to-have) The same configuration works with Windows clients.

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