“Using NISGina, Linux and Windows NT provide seamless
cross-platform authentication.”
“Integrating Windows and Linux clients can take many forms. For
example, you might want to enable Windows clients to access a Linux
filesystem across a network, or vice versa. Or you might want to
consolidate your mail system and its mail clients so that users can
access their mail from any platform. Each of these examples needs
one common thread: authentication services.”
“Linux and Windows NT use very different mechanisms for
supporting a networkwide, global authentication system. One
frequently used service for Linux clients is SunSoft’s NIS (Network
Information Services), formerly YP (Yellow Pages). NIS provides a
means of making central system files, such as global passwords,
available to clients. In the absence of such a service, each Linux
machine would validate logins against the local /etc/passwd.
Because each client has its own version of the file, keeping the
information synchronized between Linux boxes can be difficult.”