[Info-vax] LDAP (was Re: Digital)

[Paul Sture]

On Tue, 31 Jul 2012 13:41:51 -0400, David Froble wrote:

> Isn't everyone really happy that none of this LDAP bullshit was allowed
> to mess up VMS ?

When I was managing a fleet of VMS systems I would have loved to have had 
single sign on.  Losing my Alpha workstation due to a network outage 
meant I then had a serious number of logins to do again.  I also had to 
keep my passwords synchronised manually across the lot, for the sake of 
sanity.

In contrast the PCs we had at that place had smart card readers which did 
authorisation, and your smart card stored all your passwords for 
different applications (mail, web access, time sheets etc).

The really neat thing there was you could use your card on any PC in the 
organisation and (with a bit of chugging while it installed your 
authorised apps to that PC) you had your desktop environment ready and 
waiting.

This meant that when I was attending an in-house course I could still use 
X11 to bring up a CDE desktop, monitor my VMS systems and use MAIL or 
PHONE to alert my colleagues back in the office if a problem required 
attention.

It was pretty cool being able to do that.

-- 
Paul Sture