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gwestrich · Jun 9, 2005, 08:30 AM

I would like to purchase Mac's instead of Linux boxes to use as workstations on a UNIX network. The workstations should allow only those user's with valid username and passwords that reside on the SGI Server.

Can this be done? Will I need 3rd party software or can the Mac do it on it's own?

Thanks

Tyre MacAdmin · Jun 9, 2005, 08:49 AM

I think so.... If you're using IRIX then I'm guessing you are using NIS. OS X uses a program called "Netinfo" to authenticate. I'm pretty sure you can set your OS X boxes up to authenticate to a NIS master with netinfo.

OreoCookie · Jun 9, 2005, 09:03 AM

Moving to Unix, please stand by. .

gwestrich · Jun 9, 2005, 04:21 PM

Thanks Tyler.

Does anyone else have something a little more exact???

Partisan01 · Jun 9, 2005, 08:54 PM

How about this:

http://www.bresink.de/osx/nis.html

gwestrich · Jun 10, 2005, 08:43 AM

At First glance it looks pretty good.
I will still entertain other thoughts and opinions.

Thanks for the help.

davechen · Jun 13, 2005, 04:22 PM

Yup. We authenticate our Macs to an SGI server running NIS. It's just a matter of setting it up then the Directory Access utility.

However we're going to move away from NIS and SGI's, probably moving to a Mac server running LDAP. Our SGI's are old and too expensive to support anymore. And NIS is old and crappy.

Tyre MacAdmin · Jun 17, 2005, 11:40 AM

There are a couple projects going on with FreeBSD that would male life easier if ported to OS X. They might be of interest to anyone using OS X with SGI's:

http://people.freebsd.org/~rodrigc/xfs/

http://www.vinumvm.org/

With the Intel switch I don't think there is a lot to it. More or less a matter of time unitl they show up in some form or another for OS X.

OreoCookie · Jun 18, 2005, 05:37 PM

It doesn't have much to do with Intel. FreeBSD is already running on quite a few architectures different from x86.

utidjian · Jun 18, 2005, 11:40 PM

Originally Posted by gwestrich

Thanks Tyler.

Does anyone else have something a little more exact???

I have been authenticating from Mac OS X clients to Linux NIS servers for 5 years now... with nary a hitch. I also export users $HOME folders from a Linux NFS server. I did it this way because that is what I had to work with at the time. On the Linux (Linux clients and servers) it was brain-dead easy to setup. On the Mac OS X client side the tricky part was getting the NFS shares to automount. The automount actually took some tricky editing of the Linux based NIS server configs. Once configured correctly though... to use a new workstation I just CCC an image onto the new Mac OS X box, plug it in, boot it up and it is ready to go. If you want more details... please ask, and please read the bresink.de page someone linked to earlier (that page was invaluable).

I would also like to get away from NIS/NFS and move to OpenLDAP/OpenAFS. NIS/NFS has some security issues if your network is very large and relatively "untrusted". We are currently working on moving all clients at the site to OpenLDAP. OpenAFS will come later.

Tyre MacAdmin · Jun 21, 2005, 04:22 PM

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

It doesn't have much to do with Intel. FreeBSD is already running on quite a few architectures different from x86.

I know... I said that because I feel that when OS X hits the outside world on Intel you'll see a spike in the developer curve.