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A customer asked if it's possible to authenticate windows users (on XP or Win7 machines) against an eDirectory server to be able to open a session on a Windows 2008 server.

Let me try to clarify my setup:

+--------+                    +------------+              +---------+
| Win XP |-- ask permision -->| eDirectory |-- connects ->| Win2008 |
+--------+                    +------------+              +---------+

eDirectory contains the centralized list of users/passwords that can connect to many servers in the company, including this Win2008. My customer wants to log-in to a Windows XP machine with some credentials, then be able to open a session in Win2008 to use a specific program.

If this is possible, could you give me some pointers on how can this be accomplished?.

Leonardo Ramé
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1 Answers1

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The functionality you're looking for is called Domain Services for Windows. I haven't used Novell products in ages and I can't tell you anything about the compatibility or reliability of this functionality. It looks like they're leveraging Samba (and, probably, proprietary code) to emulate an Active Directory domain.

Evan Anderson
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  • As far as I've read, yes, they use Samba and LDAP to emulate Active Directory. So, the Win2008 server should be joined to the Samba/eDirectory domain,then my WinXP users should log-in to that domain?. – Leonardo Ramé Jan 18 '12 at 23:12
  • According to the documentation for the product that scenario would work. – Evan Anderson Jan 18 '12 at 23:12
  • Wow, I didn't think this product existed anymore. Last time I had to work with is was in integrating SUSE 10 with an existing AD. And no the 2008 server stays in it's own forest and all of the novel clients stay in edirectory. What happens is that credentials from edirectory can be used for permissioning and authentication to the AD domain (and vice versa). – Jim B Jan 19 '12 at 01:52
  • The docs I was seeing seemed to indicate that Windows machines could join the "domain" created by the Novell product. – Evan Anderson Jan 19 '12 at 03:01
  • This could also be paired with Novell ZENWorks to provide Dynamic Local User and an application for auto-connection to the Terminal Server. – Johnnie Odom Mar 14 '12 at 19:09