We are looking at the advantages and disadvantages of migrating the majority of our users to linux/Unix on the desktop. One of the potential advantages may be intermezzo, as it can provide file-server redundancy (specifically for files being worked on) on the client, and allows disconnected operation for laptops (which doesn't work too well with windows).
However, one of the potential disadvantages is dicsonnected authentication. For example, how do you log into the laptop with a network account (NIS/LDAP/Winbind) when you are disconnected from the network? We have a number of laptops that are shared, and it would be excessive work to add local accounts each time someone needs to take a laptop away from the network. With windows 2000 on the laptops, people can log in once while connected to the network, and get their windows profile from the samba domain controller. Disconnect the machine, and they can still log in. Would it be possible to implement something like this on linux? Two things (AFAICS) need to be implemented. One is a module that can cache previous nss lookups (for example from nss_ldap or nss_winbind), the other could be a pam module that caches passwords. On the issue of disconnected file use, would it be possible to have intermezzo automatically add/remove files from it's filesystem? For example, when someone logs into a laptop while connected: 1)user/group information should be looked-up and cached 2)the password (and maybe some other things to ensure configuration has not changed, like md5sum of the pam.d file?) is cached 3)The users home directory is synced by intermezzo. Then, when the user disconnects from the network, everything works as before. Is something like this feasible in the short-term (ie Mandrake 8.3/9.0?). Linux is really only ready for the corporate desktop when you can give your non-technical (copmuter-wise) CEO a laptop running linux! Hopefully that will be soon! Buchan
