[nzlug] General server/client enquiry

[Daniel Lawson]

> If you are looking to learn things that are generally useful I advise
> roughly this order of things:
>
>  * learn LDAP for NSS and auth
>  * learn Kerberos for auth (with LDAP NSS)
>  * learn about puppet and cfengine
>  * learn NFSv3
>  * learn AFS
>   

I'd go a step further in refining this, and say do the following for 
your first run:

* learn about LDAP for NSS and auth
* learn about NFS.

And maybe look at the others later on.

* Kerberos is a nice to have, especially if you have services that 
depend on it, but otherwise it's really just that - a nice to have. 
* Puppet and cfengine make a lot of sense when you're managing a lot of 
servers or doing a lot of tasks repeatedly, but I don't see the average 
home user benefitting, especially if they are planning on installing 
lots of random distros (which will require different configurations) on 
their desktop.
* I don't know anyone who has managed to get AFS stable. I think the 
guys at CMU might have it stable, but even then I'm not sure... ;)

There is actually a fair bit of information on ldap for nss/auth in the 
WLUG (and therefore, the NZLUG) wiki - but I suspect it's all woefully 
out of date now. If the OP would like to tidy some of it up during his 
travels I'd definitely appreciate it :)