Hello all, This might be just a wee bit heavy for the newbie list but... A friend of mine (a lecturer in a local college) needs some help setting up a computer lab. I somehow, managed to convince him that he really does not want to us M$ crapware - after a couple of hours staring slack jawed at my desktop (what with GIMP, Moonlight Creator, Netscape, FTP, HTTP - to my local server) all going on at once in several virtual desktops...well :P)... Anyway, I convinced him that FS/OSS is the way to go. Saves his college oodles of money and frees them from the M$ tax (tax evasion?), protects their investments from obsolescence etc.etc...(not to mention earning him some honour points amongst his peers) So, I've agreed to help him out. Now, my question is, what are the different options open to me here? I've checked out NAG's NIS section but it does not look complete. In many places they say type:...and nothing after the semi-colon. It seems it's very much incomplete still. And it's very confusing about what exactly needs to be done. So, here I am. I need to implement this: Centralized user authentication and resource utilization. The last bit is perhaps not to difficult (I think it's just nfs/samba but do correct me if I'm wrong) How many ways are there and what are the pros and cons of each? And most importantly, where do I go for more info and help? Thanks in advance and looking forward to your suggestions. Regards, -- -------------------------------------- Kuraiken - Apprentice Codecaster -------------------------------------- Discussions heartily welcomed; Flames generally ignored. --------------------------------------