[TriLUG] Linux domains

[Justin Johnson]

This may be a dumb question, but how does linux handle the 'domain model',
or at least Microsoft's
definition of it? What I am asking is, if I have several linux servers, say
a mail server, a file server, and
an application server, how do I assign privileges to those servers to users?
Do I have to set up an account
on each server for each user? Or is there a way to have users authenticated
on one server, which controls access to the
resources on all the other servers in the domain?

For those of you familiar with MS Domain models (not implying it's
particular to MS, just don't know anything else...yet), I am
trying to find a linux parallel to a Single Master domain model where all
users login to a PDC, which then controls access to
resources (hopefully through users assigned to groups)

Pointers to readings are always welcome.

Thanks,
Justin