I have a CentOS 6.x/ NIS based network from which I need to start sharing some folders to Win7 machines. I've installed Samba on a test system but can't seem to get the trick of having the Win7 systems authenticate to NIS.
I've found a number of references to 'yes you can use NIS to authenticate windows shares' but the only working examples I've found are for LDAP/AD. Is it required that I convert the whole operation to LDAP?
Short version: No, you can only use a Samba Password DB or LDAP.
Longer version: SMB/CIFS only transmits a hashed password. It uses one of two methods of hashing, neither of which are supported by any standard NIS, PAM, etc that a *nix system might use. You can use LDAP as a backend for both SMB and PAM because a PAM module can hash the password however it likes (including using a hash that is essentially "compatible" with SMB).
Anyplace you've seen a reference to NIS "working" is that the *nix system's groups can be used by Samba in conjunction with one of the aforementioned authentication schemes. So you can have an account in LDAP and pull the groups from /etc/group or NIS. Authentication has never worked against NIS or much of anything other than the above (there were some other variants, nobody cares).
