Tools for integrating Linux systems with Microsoft Active Directory

Strange Land

Article from Issue 170/2015
Author(s):

We explore some leading tools for integrating your Linux network with an Active Directory environment.

The benefits of keeping user and group information in one place are many. A central user management system is both more convenient and more secure. Walking around the network, changing user and group information on multiple systems takes time and increases the possibility of errors when creating or deleting an account. Maintaining different user information on different systems can also lead to insecure practices, such as password proliferation.

If your network is big enough to be managed at all, you have probably considered managing user accounts from a central location. Many tools exist for managing users in homogeneous environments; however, central management becomes difficult if users want to access a variety of operating systems.

Active Directory is Microsoft's grandiose, enterprise-grade central management solution. Although Active Directory is built from many open technologies, such as LDAP and Kerberos, Microsoft didn't exactly create Active Directory with Linux in mind. Over the years, however, several tools have emerged for combining Linux user resources with Active Directory. This article includes some popular options, such as:

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