However I never quite got it done, always seemed real close but not quite. Did you document?? I am now trying the RH / Fedora DS - no problem getting it installed but configuration........ Any pointers to docs that actually work. I have purchased books, read magazines and spent probably 100+ hours only to run out of time and energy. It remains on my 'to do' list. Thanks for any pointers.
I've installed Fedora/RedHat DS a bunch of times. The basic configuration is quite painless. These are the docs I use:
https://sites.google.com/site/disciplinux/linux/centralized-authentication
Those worked as of CentOS 5.3, which was the last time I did it from scratch.
For the OP, it might not be exactly sufficient since there was a requirement for minute by minute login allow/disallow, but I would not want to administer more than a handful of nodes without LDAP.