CentOS/RH 5 Samba as PDC+NIS w/o LDAP?

[scott-DPNOqEs/LNQ at public.gmane.org (Scott Ehrlich)]

For those who are new or forget - I have a RHEL 5 Server and a few dualboot XP 
w/SP2 and CentOS 5 systems.  The Linux machines were installed straight of 
CD/DVD, no patches.

I was initially going to try a single sign-on to the RH 5 box via LDAP, but RH 
says it simply isn't possible and I don't know my way around LDAP other than it 
is a database and exists.

So, option 2 is to simply have the RH 5 Server act as a Windows PDC via Samba 
and use NIS to enable users to log in, all the while, in either situation, 
having the RH 5 box serve out the user's central home directory - mounted as a 
drive letter under Windows, or exported under Linux.

I've spent much of last week and much of today [trying to learn] LDAP, and 
today, finally deciding to dump that, but proceeding with Samba as a PDC.

For Samba as a PDC - what is the best way to have Win XP Pro w/SP2 successfully 
authenticate to Samba as a domain controller with encyrpted passwords?  And, to 
have Samba establish the user's home directory as a mapped drive?  I've used a 
barrage of web sites showing various smb.conf confing files but can't yet get 
my test XP machine to authenticate to the domain I set in my smb.conf file.

For NIS - what is the best way to permit the user to log into their account, 
created on RH 5 server, and have their home directory exported to their 
workstation?

I presume there will be no problem with users simultaneously logging into 
multiple workstations, be it Linux or Windows?

I only bother the list because I have scoured so many web sites, some with a 
variety of options, I believe I'll get the best answer here.

Thanks.

Scott

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