Has anyone ever looked at pGina for authentication. I wonder if there is a way you could use the LDAP database in your e-smith server for authentication?
This would be a nice setup. 
I wonder if you could use multiple e-smith servers in this fashion so you could run a network in a NT domain like layout? 
Just throwing things out for people much smarter then me to look at and think about. 
PGina is here. 
http://pgina.xpasystems.com