I am not an expert in Unix at all. My knowledge of Unix is average. We have a couple of Unix servers, Solaris and Linux, which run mostly web servers, and Oracle databases. Currently users have multiple user IDs for Unix and AD applications. Is it possible to make use of the Windows Active directory as the authentication provider for Unix users? Can this be done at all? I was reading on Windows Service for Unix. But not very clear if it does provide direct AD authentication for Unix boxes? We would like to centralize the authentication to just one provider, the AD. Appreciate any inputs.
PAM can be used to authenticate a user against AD for shell logon [1][2]
Samba can be told to join an AD domain.[3]
[1] Authenticating Linux against Active Directory
[2] HOWTO: Configure Ubuntu for Active Directory Authentication - Developer Community
[3] Samba & Active Directory - SambaWiki
The articles listed here Active Directory Integration Index - blog.scottlowe.org - The weblog of an IT pro specializing in virtualization, storage, and servers are also useful.