does Linux/UNIX have a directory service

hi guys,
while going through active directroy services(windows 2000) i was wondering whether there was an equivalent directory service for LINUX or UNIX..if so how can i get different directory services to communicate,incase i have UNIX/LINUX and windows servers on my network?where can i find more info regarding this...

with regards scorpion

www.samba.org or search the internet for samba

Fedora Directory Service http://directory.fedora.redhat.com/
NIS/YP http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...twork-nis.html
Maybe these are more up your alley.

This may be of interest as well, it's been around for quite some time, it is call Distributed Computer Environment (DCE)

http://www.opengroup.org/dce/

Hi Opus,
You can use Open LDAP to connect OS systems to various directory services that support LDAP. Samba is a way to read the windows directory from linux and share files. Microsoft supports LDAP in Active Directory but you may have to to build the query or purshase interfaces. Samba does that for you but I think it's still beta or in dev?

Anyway you can use an LDAP query browser to figure out what your looking for and build that into an openLDAP thingy. So yes, using Light Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directory services can talk to each other.

This thing kicks ass BTW.