I'm curious as to what are the current "best practices" when it comes to centralized administration of a network of Unix (primarily Linux, but not necessarily so) machines? Essentially, what is the equivalent of Active Directory for a network with one or more Unix hosts? The immediate answer I come up with would be something like OpenLDAP plus PAM but what I'm looking for is the suite of tools (GUI and CLI apps) for managing the directory, deploying software, centralizing sign-on and security, managing printers, etc. In a perfect world, I would like to centralize administration of Windows, Unix, and OS X machines via a single directory service, though I imagine such a solution would be expensive and/or cumbersome if it even existed. Or is this something Samba 4 will do?
posted by Imhotep is Invisible on Sep 9, 2009 - 5 answers

Looking for a program for Linux (or Mac) that will record what ports I'm using during a given period of time. [more inside]
posted by plaidrabbit on Mar 19, 2009 - 15 answers

What were your greatest victories and punishing woes as a unix/linux system administrator? [more inside]
posted by Myles on Jul 21, 2008 - 11 answers

I need to get up to speed on running Linux MySQL database servers so I can do a credible job of managing them. What are some resources I can access to do this? [more inside]
posted by diode on Apr 14, 2008 - 2 answers

How do I get the correct return code from a unix command line application after I've piped it through another command that succeeded? [more inside]
posted by ChrisR on Nov 24, 2007 - 22 answers

Years of Linux experience, but looking for training on Solaris and AIX without having to relearn the basics [more inside]
posted by tkolstee on Mar 1, 2007 - 5 answers

I am a Windows administrator who is trying to learn how to configure a Linux server. What would be most helpful to me at this point is a reference that walks me through the process of configuring major server rolls, preferably comparing and contrasting the process to doing the same on a windows server. [more inside]
posted by worstkidever on Oct 30, 2005 - 8 answers