[TriLUG] Novell jumps into Linux

[Jon Carnes]

OpenLDAP is about 2 years away from being what e-directory is now. I
have no doubts that OpenLDAP *will* catchup with e-directory, but for
now the tools used for OpenLDAP are quite crude and very limited.

E-dir integrates transparently with the file serving, the print serving,
the messaging, and of course directory rights.  This is why folks will
*pay* for it.

By the time you have setup the non-transparent OpenLDAP controls for
Samba, Cups, and Postfix - you will have put in enough consulting hours
that you could have bought e-directory.

As a consultant selling Open Source solutions to Enterprises, I need a
solution that truly competes with Active Directory and works across
platform - so that I can continue to sell those Linux and BSD servers.
E-directory is it.

Novell coming into the market is a very good thing.  They bring a lot of
Enterprise support capability.  I know some folks like to joke about
that, and some folks think that Novell is dead, but ask the millions of
huge customers that still use Novell and you will find that part of
their loyalty is due to Novell's customer and technical support.

Jon Carnes

On Tue, 2003-06-24 at 13:32, Magnus wrote:
> On Tuesday, June 24, 2003, at 12:57 PM, Jim Ray wrote:
> 
> > is OpenLDAP the best replacement for active directory and user manager 
> > for domains?
> 
> It's not an easy question to answer.
> 
> OpenLDAP itself is a pretty robust back end.  It serves the same 
> purpose in Linux as Active Directory does under Windows.
> 
> The user management bit is a different story. Unfortunately there isn't 
> any one tool out there that does everything.  directory_administrator 
> is a simple tool for adding groups & users but not much of anything 
> else.  gq is a more effective LDAP browser but doesn't seem to be under 
> active development anymore.
> 
> I think what would be a good start is something like phpmysql... 
> phpmyldap maybe? :)
> 
> Right now I use a combination of directory_administrator and gq, as 
> neither does completely what I need it to do (though gq would be much 
> more useful if it internally handled hashing user passwords, which is 
> my primary reason for using directory_administrator).  Sooner or later 
> I'm going to have the time to write my own admin tools.
> 
> --
> 
> C. Magnus Hedemark
> http://trilug.org/~chrish
> PGP Key fingerprint = 984D 9A88 3D60 016F BE01 1506 60FB 85E1 9ABD 96F6