So, after a long struggle with licensing issues, bad or broken management software and recurring technical problems in the face of which Novell is apparently helpless, the folks here at my workplace (whose opinions are, nevertheless, not necessarily represented by the following) are considering ditching Novell Netware altogether and moving to, believe it or not, a 100% Linux back office. (Well, 90%.. Unfortunately we'll still need some NT in there for the time being). I'm wondering if anybody's had any experience with similar migrations and would be interested in sharing their thoughts. Any input is welcome, but I'm particularly interested in answers to a few questions. -Any thoughts on Penguin Computing, VA Linux or other companies selling pre-built rack-mount servers? -We want to have a centralized user authentication system. I'm thinking pam_LDAP, but I don't know LDAP at all well, and I haven't seen any particularly sparkling examples of LDAP management tools. Any pointers? What about compatibility with stuff like Samba, or Cyrus IMAP? -We'll need a file server at each of our 3 locations. At present we have only 1 mail server, at our main branch. How easy would it be to get mail servers at each location? (They're on seperate Class C networks, but using the same domain name). Is this even vaguely a good idea? -Lastly, can Windows roaming profiles be handled somehow via Samba? A cursory glance at the problem seems to indicate that it can be done, but I'm curious if anybody's done it. No, we're not moving to Linux on the desktop... Yet. Like I said, any input is welcome (unless it's yet another "use Debian" post) I've got to get some kinda outline drawn up for my boss so we can take it to the board in about a week... -- Eric Hillman UNIX Sysadmin/Webmaster City & County Credit Union ehillman at cccu.com