Authentication Integration

Because we know that your current infrastructure is of considerable value, we've made sure that Ubuntu Server Edition integrates perfectly into it without having to modify it. Whether you are running Windows, Unix, MacOSX or other flavors of Unix, Ubuntu Server Edition comes with all the tools to easily integrate with your current user management systems, allowing your clients to seamlessly authenticate, share documents and access services.

We know that this interoperability should be made as easy as possible and our engineers are constantly working on improving its automation so that you have less to configure and more time to get real work done. Ubuntu 8.04 adds likewise-open, a package allowing Ubuntu servers join an active directory domain in a single command.

New in 8.10:

OpenLDAP settings now uniform in multi-replica environment

The default installation of the OpenLDAP server now uses the cn=config extension, which allows automatic synchronization between LDAP replicas of configuration changes made. OpenLDAP has always been Ubuntu's recommandation for centralized authentication and authorization. This addition makes it a lot simpler to administer a network where multiple replicas of the same OpenLDAP directory are deployed.

PAM authentication framework

Ubuntu 8.10 features a new pam-auth-update
tool, which allows simple management of PAM authentication
configuration for both desktops and servers.
Packages providing PAM modules will be configured automatically, and
users can adjust their authentication preferences by running sudo pam-auth-update.

More information can be found in the Ubuntu wiki.