A Question of User Authentication

[Roxoff]

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OK, so I'm going to be moving house in a few weeks, my permanent internet connection is going to be offline for a week or two, and I'm going to take the opportunity to re-implement my mail/web server and have it do more of the services I actually need.

One of the services I want to roll out is remote user authentication, so we have one set of user accounts on the server, and distributed machines allowing logons using those account details - this must also include home space sharing. It's been a while since I did anything like this; previously I used NIS/YP for authentication and NFS+Samba for home directory sharing. This worked great, but the authentication only worked for Linux machines, and the home directory sharing was not consistent. Now want a more comprehensive solution which will work for both Linux and Windows machines.

Is there anyone here who has experience of these issues that can suggest the best approach? I dont mind reading lots of stuff to make it all work (so feel free to post links to sites with info) but I really dont know enough about this subject to know where to head.

For background info, heres the basic layout for the lan:

Server - CentOS4.2 (probably).
Clients - Machines 1 & 2: dual-boot desktops, FC4 Linux/Windows XP pro, Machine 3: Desktop Windows XP pro, Machine 4: Laptop Dual boot FC4/Windows XP home.

[winter]

you may want to take a look at ldap...or if your realy in a suicidal mood you may want to take alook at a ldap with kerberos password back end.

[Roxoff]

I'd taken a look at LDAP, it looks particularly well suited to shared address books for email account, but you can use it for all kinds of shared network stuff. Does anyone have an practical experience on using LDAP for shared authentication that can point me at good resources to find out about it? Or is there something better than LDAP that I'm missing?