Authenticating Linux logins via LDAP (Samba / Active Directory)

I’ve been working on infrastructure of a fleet of a few dozen Amazon EC2 instances for the past week, and with a rapidly-growing team, we decided it was appropriate to make a central authentication / authorization service.

So, that meant setting up some sort of LDAP server.

I was a bit intimidated at first (the most I’ve done is seen people manage and complain about Active Directory), but I finally got it set up. Here are the components:

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A month with Linux on the Desktop

It’s been a bit over a month since I installed Linux as my main desktop OS on a PC I built to replace OS X on a (cylinder) Mac Pro. I installed Ubuntu MATE 16.04.

Here are my general thoughts:

  • Linux has come a far way in 6 years (last time I used it full-time on the desktop).

  • There are Linux versions of popular software that is vital to my workflows – Firefox, Chrome, Dropbox, Slack, Sublime Text, etc.

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