Linux squeezed out by Active Directory, cifs demise?

[tashirosgt]

Some big organizations are moving toward managing all their branches by mandating that everyone use windows "active directory". This is to centralize system administration tasks at some headquarters. And I've been told that "cifs" which is the thing that underlies Windows file sharing and samba is insecure and will be replaced by another scheme, one that is tending to be the property of Microsoft and Intel. What are the prospects for this happening?

(And I mean this as a technical question, not a political one. i.e. Is this a correct statement of the technical developments? Are there free software projects that will mitigate this? )

[dorian]

Hallo,

i don't know if ths question can really be answered from a technical point of view. Windows Filesharing is insecure and Samba inherits some of it's problems, but also solves some. I was really frightend by the news that my university switched to an windows active directory service and right now i can get along with this. But what happens if Microsoft (MS) develops a proriatary "secure" service which is incompatible to active directory and -more of interest- LDAP? That is a point i am really afraid of, but only when MS releases their service, it will become clear what can be done.

Oh i forgot: What happens if open-source produces a secure service as an alternative to MS, which integrates in Linux and Windows and more importantly gets widely accepted by windows users?

My 2 cent.

Dorian

[egurski]

I find it amusing that people will fall for FUD. MS would love nothing beeter than to spread FUD and does it through advertising and MS sponsored surveys. I've been in this business for over 35 years and I've heard this same story time and time again. As a matter of fact , the only secure logon would be to pass the NSA security concerns (in the US). AD does not meet that requirement/level.

Some facts about AD --- it can corrupt itself if you have over 10,000 objects. We have over 400 MS servers and I can't keep track of how many time we've had to rebuild a server because AD was corrupted --- some months ago but only noticed after a reboot...

I administer Windows, Solaris, RedHat and Fedora. I have yet to have a serious problem with any flavor of Unix.

I beleive the single signon concept is coming and not the way MS sees it. There vision is myopic at best and from waht I see AD is not really ready for Prime Time. WE recently wnet through an exercise with BIND vs MS DNS. Interestingly enough, Gartner indicated that this was not what a large coorporation should be using (i.e. DNS uses AD)...

If you do some research you will see that the visonaries do not see an all MS world. RedHat and Novell along with IBM, Sun and Veritas are definitely working on collaborative efforts. They see the problems but as of yet there is no clear cut answer nor will there be one in the near future...