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> Suddenly I'm in the rather
> exciting position of being given [almost] free reign to research
> other Open Source solutions,

That's way cool.

> I need to quickly get a decent grasp of the possibilites for
> moving us away from a MS-based, Active Directory network.

If I remember right the Active Directory stuff is a modified version of
LDAP, with some propriety extensions.  So it would seem like you could
set up a Linux LDAP server, and have it be happy with Active Directory.=20
If I remember right, there is some sort of standard here, like an IETF
standard.  I remember that MS was trying to push AD into the slot, so
Novell gave up all the details on NDS (Novell Directory Services, vastly
superior to AD) so that the IETF would take that instead.  Basically the
parts of LDAP that people wanted to add was replication, which isn't
supported by LDAP by default.  I don't know if anyone supports it today
either.  (I haven't looked into this stuff for a while)

Now, that long answer comes down to:  Check out OpenLDAP they may have
your answer www.openldap.org.  Also, to look at it more from the login
point of view you might look at http://diradmin.open-it.org/index.php=20
Which is a user/group manager for LDAP directories.  There is also a PAM
module for LDAP so you can have a single login for your Windows/Linux
users.

I don't know what you are using Active Directory for currently, but if
it is just logins, LDAP should be able to replace it.  And I think the
only free LDAP is OpenLDAP (but it's been around forever, and is
stable).

		Good Luck,
			Ted

PS - If you want to send me other questions your welcome to, you're
welcome to send them to the list also.  I am not a sysadmin, I was one
for a small company before, but I don't know that I'm any good at it :)=20
I have been using Linux for quite a while though...

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