Last week's TechMail was Two-factor SSH authentication via Google secures Linux logins which talks about using Google two-factor authentication with SSH (and PAM in general). I really like it and it works quite well although the comments in the TechMail indicate another option called Duo for two-factor authentication that sounds …

This week's TechMail tip is Authentication caching with nscd which talks about how to keep authentication credentials cached for disconnected operations (i.e. if you auth against an LDAP server and it goes down or you take your laptop home).

It's missing some bits tho, which the first comment noted …

I find LDAP for authentication highly irritating. It's better than some alternatives, like NIS (haven't looked at NIS+ so I don't know how it measures up), but man oh man, it's a real nuisance sometimes.

I wrote that LDAP Authentication piece when there was essentially nothing else and it took …