PAM/NSS-DCE for Linux

The Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) in conjunction with its Distributed File System (DFS) implements a common, hardware and operating system independent platform, giving the administrator a (nearly) homogeneous system view. But some essential ports of this "network operating system" are still missing: concerning Linux, there is no stable DCE-port, yet. Furthermore there is no DFS implementation for Linux at all.

PAM/NSS-DCE for Linux is a nice and portable way to integrate Linux clients into existing DCE/DFS environments. The basic idea is to make use of PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) and NSS (Name Service Switch). DFS access is gained using the so called "NFS to DFS gateway" that comes with DCE/DFS. A PAM module is used to authenticate against the DCE registry and to set up the appropriate NFS/DFS mappings. The network connections between the Linux clients and the DCE/DFS host used for authentication are secured by SSL. An appropriate NSS module is responsible for the name service lookups like user <-> uid and group <-> gid conversions. A corresponding daemon pair (pamdced and nssdced) on any DCE client serves the PAM and NSS requests.

Presentations

Source Code

Binaries

Before you install one of the following binary distributions: Be sure to safe your current configuration files at first! Back to my projects page.
PAM/NSS-DCE for Linux - Copyright © 1999-2004 Markus Zahn, Jörg Lehmann