Ubuntu Server Edition

Because we know that your current infrastructure is of considerable value, we've made sure that Ubuntu Server Edition integrates perfectly into it, without you having to modify it. Whether you are running Windows, Unix, MacOSX or other flavours 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.

New in 9.04

Likewise Open version 5 is now available in Ubuntu 9.04. This release brings key improvements through a complete rewrite of the underlying services:

• New threaded authentication service (lsassd) results in improved system responsiveness under heavy load, faster online/offline detection for mobile users
• Inclusion of idmap compatibility plugins for Samba 3 file and print servers
• DCE/RPC support for TCP, UDP, and Named Pipes transports
• New auditing and logging service (eventlogd) using sqlite3 as the storage engine
• New domain controller location service (netlogond)

As the upgrade to version 5 requires a manual re-authentication to the domain, it needs a manual upgrade procedure that is described on the Ubuntu Server Blog.