Scott Lowe wrote:
....
> Unfortunately, I don't host any shares on the Linux servers, so I don't
> know that this solution will work for my network. We do use Samba, of
> course, but that's from a client-side perspective so that Linux (and Mac
> OS X) systems can access the Windows-based file servers.

The shares really don't have to do anything but trigger the user
create... so they can be read only (useless) if you want.

The are USEFUL however if you want the transparent single sign-on with
a SSH key on the client side... but actually this can be done via
other mechansims as well... so I suppose you only need the share
to communicate the info needed to perform the user create in NIS.

I have all of this working at a plastics manufacturing facility
today.

For them, their accounting package runs on Linux and they were used
to the ease of bringing up the package under Windows that they had
when the application was DOS based. Now they hit a special PuTTY
button on their desktops which automatically hits the Linux server
running the accounting package and since their SSH key was loaded
for them at login, it takes them straight into the application (I
have the application setup as their shell). But.. even without
the key, they can login into the linux box NTLM style by providing
their windows id and password.

Another nit... for portability across all Unix (especially AIX)
you'll want to keep your usernames at 8 chars or less. Password
should be just fine though.. whatever size Windows will allow.
You can always map the id's via smbusers... but it makes the automation
much more difficult.