NIS on a school network - need some clarifications

[Lee Harr]

>I'm working on a project to change the network on my school to open source
>software only (FreeBSD/Linux workstations only).
>

Excellent. Some lucky students there!


>I knew about NIS from readings of the handbook years ago, so I revisited
>it today, but there' is something that's missing. I understand the NIS
>accounts reside on the master server and I have to add users on the master
>server. But then, users on workstations will have their home directories
>etc referring only to the local machine.
>

I considered doing the same thing... using NFS mounts. My problem with
it was security. I think NFS v4 has better security. I ended up using thin
clients to one single server. Works quite well. Depends on how many
clients you need though.


>Since I plan to switch the whole network from windows to FreeBSD / Linux
>(only adding linux because other people want it :-P), I'll need to
>substitute the following applications:
>
>- Visual C++ (anjuta)

KDevelop is quite nice

>- MS Access  (?)

There are a few still in early stages of development. I think
that Kexi (http://www.koffice.org/kexi/) and rekall
(http://www.rekallrevealed.org/) are the most access-like,
but there are others too...


>
>I don't know much about access, but I believe it's possible to have a
>ms-access database server.. if that's the case, is there a open source
>client with a similiar GUI to ms access available ? (note: mysql/etc won't
>do, the school program says ms access, so we need something similiar)
>

I think that's backwards, really. The database that comes with
access is pretty weak, but many people use access as a front end
to better database engines like postgresql.

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE*  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail