Centralized user authentication/home dirs... how?

[vputz]

I have a few linux boxes--only a few, but I feel certain there is a way to centralize both the user authentication and the home directories.

I can understand /home a bit (using an NFS-mounted /home directory) but this would seem to cause problems without similar user numbers, etc on all systems.

It sounds like this is the sort of thing OpenLDAP would solve, but a) I'm not sure if that's the case, and b) I keep stumbling over dead OpenLDAP articles in the gentoo wiki, so I'm skeered.

(also, my centralized server is an old beast and I worry about it failing and me being totally unable to get into my other boxes if the only OpenLDAP server goes down--is this a valid fear?).

So--any direction here? Which trees should I bark up?

[alkan]

NIS very easy to setup. And don't worry about reaching your boxes if it is eveer down. you can always login as root and fix stuff