What linux is easy to attach to a windows domain

Question

for a development test bed I need to attach ANY linux machiene to a test AD Domain and do single sign on through it. Is there a Linux Distro that is easy to connect to AD?

Answer 1

perhaps it was a silly question, this was stupid simple.

Ubuntu-10.04:

sudo apt-get install likewise-open
sudo domainjoin-cli join example.com Administrator

then ssh 'DOMAIN\username'@hostname and poof single sign on magic!

EDIT: today (June 2010) the likewise-open package is missing a dependency on psmisc so you have to run this first:

sudo apt-get install psmisc

if you already installed likewise-open then:

sudo apt-get purge likewise-open
sudo apt-get install likewise-open

EDIT1: need to add the AD DNS server as the hosts dns server first, and set the hostname.
EDIT2: need to make sure the reverse dns is correct.

Answer 2

CentOS, just open a terminal and type "setup" - then follow the instructions

Answer 3

On RHEL or CentOS 4 or newer the following command will reconfigure the auth system and join AD. You can remove the flag for PAM /etc/security/access.conf if you don't want to configure it but I find that not everyone with a valid AD account should be allowed onto every host, only members of certain AD groups. I believe there is also a flag to configure winbind to allow disconnected authentication, for laptops and such which need to log in when not on the network.

sudo /usr/sbin/authconfig-tui \
 --enablewinbind \
 --enablewinbindauth \
 --enablemkhomedir \
 --enablepamaccess \
 --enablelocauthorize \
 --smbsecurity=ads \
 --smbrealm=DOMAIN.COM \
 --smbworkgroup=DOMAIN \
 --smbservers=dc.domain.com \
 --winbindtemplatehomedir="/home/%U" \
 --winbindtemplateshell="/bin/bash" \
 --enablewinbindusedefaultdomain \
 --kickstart \
 --winbindjoin=DomainAdminAcct

Answer 4

Actually any Linux distro with a current Samba install should be able to be joined to a Windows domain. As mentioned Likewise on Ubuntu makes it extremely easy to get it up and working but I found that it worked best if I didn't have Likewise AND Samba installed otherwise they tried to fight one another.

Samba would be a more involved installation process as Likewise appears to be solely a NSS plugin of sorts while Samba adds the whole kitchen sink along with it allowing file and printer sharing to be made available.