Home / ubuntu / Questions / 1393613
In Process
gerlos
Asked: 2022-02-19 03:47:31 +0800 CST

How to manage several users and machine deployed in 3 locations?

  • 772

How can I centralise the management of ~40 PCs that will be running Ubuntu Desktop 20.04 LTS?
Those PC will be used by ~100 users (students, teachers and staff) in 3 different locations, so I expect to setup some sort of central authentication.

Currently we have one Ubuntu 20.04 LTS server providing dns, dhcp and samba file sharing to ~10 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS desktops that are essentially single-user machines. Everything is running in our headquarters.

It's the first time I'm asked to do something similar, so I'm quite confused and I'm not sure what I need to setup.

networking

1 Answers

  1. The traditional method of creating centralised user authentication (so a central database which details the username/password and permissions over multiple machines is using A OpenLDAP server. Then configuration each of your Unix machines to do PAM based ldap-auth requests.

    FYI:- https://www.tecmint.com/install-openldap-server-for-centralized-authentication/ https://www.tecmint.com/configure-ldap-client-to-connect-external-authentication/

    However OpenLDAP is quite time consuming.. So you might want to try FrerIPA which is a complete package. Though in the end it also uses OpenLDAP but at least it will get you started quicker.

    https://www.freeipa.org/page/Main_Page

    • 1