Setting up a pure linux network

The easiest way to implement the NT security model on a Linux box is with Samba Server. As long as you are not using any Windows2000 workstations, it should be a relatively smooth implementation and you can set the Linux box up as your PDC.

Samba Server is available at www.samba.org

Install Samba on your Linux box. Edit /etc/smb.conf to suit your needs. It is well documented. Mainly, change workgroup to your domain name and change the line 'security=user' to 'security=server'. Also specify the PDC for your domain. When you change security to 'server', the linux box will authenticate users from the PDC when connecting to the linux box via network neighborhood.

OK for a pure Linux environment forget about Samba. Sure Samba works great for connecting windows boxes to a Linux file server but for connecting Linux to Linux....

For authentication setup NIS (Network Information Service). The NIS HOWTO can be found at
http://www.linux.org/help/ldp/howto/NIS-HOWTO.html

For file sharing, setup NFS (Network File System). The NFS HOWTO can be found at
http://www.linux.org/help/ldp/howto/NFS-HOWTO.html

The first security measure is to configure your network to use a private IP network like the reserved Class A 10.10.*.* or the Class C 192.168.*.*, that way if you have internet access you can prevent the public network from seeing your office netwok.

In Linux you can control which machines can login to your box by adding all the hosts you want to allow in one file /etc/hosts.allow, check out the man page for hosts.allow to see the different directives you can use (ACL).
For further security using one file you should consider inforcing the wheel rule in PAM, which allows you to control who can become root (su) by adding those privileged users to the root group in the /etc/group file Depending on your linux distribution the PAM config files location most likley will be in /etc/pam.d.
You need to read the PAM Docs and modify the su file in /etc/pam.d/su to make it look like this
#############################################
#%PAM-1.0
auth required /lib/security/pam_pwdb.so shadow nullok
auth

go for samba ;)

Go for Proposed Answer 3. NIS and NFS.

If your connecting windows boxes, which i believe you are, use samba, if it really is PURE, then youll want to use proposed #3

You can always restrict your user by IP address or subnet mask.
You can specify the hostnames and their IP addresses of your local mechines in /etc/hosts , /etc/hosts.allow.
You can enable squid/proxy to restrict the IP's from out side the world or you can restrict in what way you want using squid/proxy.
If you need further information in detail please let me know what you are looking for exactly.

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