[CentOS] User accounts management for small office

Thu Apr 21 19:47:15 UTC 2011
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>

On 4/21/2011 2:24 PM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> Les Mikesell wrote:
>> On 4/21/2011 1:39 PM, Jeff Boyce wrote:
>>> Greetings -
>>>
>>> This may be a little off-topic here so if someone wants to point me to a
>>> more appropriate mailing list I would appreciate it.
>>>
>>> I administer the network for my small company and am preparing to
>>> install a new server in the next month or so.  It will be running
> CentOS 6 and
>>> function primarily as a Samba file server to 10 Windows workstations
>>> (XP, Vista, 7).  It will also host our OpenVPN server and possibly our FTP
>>> server; however I am hoping to move our FTP server to a gateway box when
>>> the new server is installed.
>>
>> Have you looked at the ClearOS distribution?  It comes up with a simple
>> web interface to manage all of this with authentication done with a
>> pre-configured LDAP setup.  I think LDAP replication is slated for the
>> next version - which is waiting for CentOS 6 for it's components but
>> you'd only need that if you have several different servers and want
>> changes to propagate across them.
>
> Actually, I found webmin helpful in setting up and testing openldap.

Webmin is a very different concept.  It is a mostly a web-form editor 
for the underlying program's config file that may know enough to keep 
you from making/saving the kinds of syntax errors that you can make with 
a normal text editor, but you still have to know what program to start 
for each service, know the relationships between programs, and make 
separate changes to each program, knowing what all of the options do.

ClearOS and the similar/earlier SME server are much more task/service 
oriented with preconfigured settings to make the common services you 
want come up and forms that relate to what you want to do rather than 
having to deal with options in several different different underlying 
programs.  So even though it is running the same samba and openldap as a 
Centos install, you don't need to change anything to make them work 
together.  And some things that are conceptually even harder, like 
optionally enabling openvpn per user and generating client certificates 
are checkbox/push button items.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com