We have around 100 employees using PCs, MACs and Linux machines (Ubuntu). I want to implement a central account and user authentication solution.
I am planning to do it with Ubuntu machines first using OpenLDAP. I have understood basics of OpenLDAP and have setup a server with few dummy users.
Moving forward, I cannot decide between Samba and ldap-auth-client to sync or authenticate users using my OpenLDAP server. This article states that Smaba server (in some complex scenarios) can be used to use a Windows domain controller to authenticate the users of a Linux/UNIX machine authenticate. But this doesn't clearly specifiy that if we can use LDAP server to authenticate users. I am looking for answers which I couldn't understand.
- Does Samba support LDAP for user authentication in Linux machines?
- Assuming that answer to the first question is yes, then does it provide a client like we have for LDAP needed to be installed on each client machine? Is it I installed by default or need to install separately?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of both?
- What should I prefer in my use case? I have some MACs and Windows machines as well in which I need to setup centralized login as well.
Thanks in advance.
