Windows And Linux Integration Hands-on Solutions for a Mixed Environment - 2005 publication.

Getting Windows and Linux machines to talk isn't an easy task. The previous chapter and this chapter demonstrate these two systems definitely come from different worlds . Indeed, the only thing they have in common is TCP/IP, and thank heavens for that. It's not a cakewalk to get Linux clients authenticating to Active Directory. In this chapter, we explored three major ways to get the job done:

• We used the Winbind method, and joined the Linux workstation to the domain. We did this without modification to the Active Directory schema.

• We modified the schema using SFU 3.5 or used the partial RFC 2307 schema built into Windows 2003/R2. We connected the client using LDAP and Kerberos. We also went the extra mile and showed you how to encrypt LDAP traffic if you wanted to.

• We explored commercial options to make the job easier. These options included packages you could load on your client systems, or metadirectory programs to synchronize your different account repositories.

Hopefully, you've been able to get a lot out this chapter and make the initial authentication to Active Directory happen. We simply couldn't go over each and every possible way to authenticate Windows to Linux and Linux to Windows. However, one of the best references I've located on the subject is Solution Guide for Windows Security and Directory Services for Unix , which is free and downloadable from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=23115 .