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-<HTML
-><HEAD
-><TITLE
->Unifed Logons between Windows NT and UNIX using Winbind</TITLE
-><META
-NAME="GENERATOR"
-CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.57"></HEAD
-><BODY
-CLASS="ARTICLE"
-BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"
-TEXT="#000000"
-LINK="#0000FF"
-VLINK="#840084"
-ALINK="#0000FF"
-><DIV
-CLASS="ARTICLE"
-><DIV
-CLASS="TITLEPAGE"
-><H1
-CLASS="TITLE"
-><A
-NAME="AEN1"
->Unifed Logons between Windows NT and UNIX using Winbind</A
-></H1
-><HR></DIV
-><DIV
-CLASS="SECT1"
-><H1
-CLASS="SECT1"
-><A
-NAME="AEN3"
->Abstract</A
-></H1
-><P
->Integration of UNIX and Microsoft Windows NT through
- a unified logon has been considered a "holy grail" in heterogeneous
- computing environments for a long time. We present <I
-CLASS="EMPHASIS"
->winbind
- </I
->, a component of the Samba suite of programs as a
- solution to the unied logon problem. Winbind uses a UNIX implementation
- of Microsoft RPC calls, Pluggable Authentication Modules, and the Name
- Service Switch to allow Windows NT domain users to appear and operate
- as UNIX users on a UNIX machine. This paper describes the winbind
- system, explaining the functionality it provides, how it is configured,
- and how it works internally.</P
-></DIV
-><DIV
-CLASS="SECT1"
-><HR><H1
-CLASS="SECT1"
-><A
-NAME="AEN7"
->Introduction</A
-></H1
-><P
->It is well known that UNIX and Microsoft Windows NT have
- different models for representing user and group information and
- use different technologies for implementing them. This fact has
- made it difficult to integrate the two systems in a satisfactory
- manner.</P
-><P
->One common solution in use today has been to create
- identically named user accounts on both the UNIX and Windows systems
- and use the Samba suite of programs to provide file and print services
- between the two. This solution is far from perfect however, as
- adding and deleting users on both sets of machines becomes a chore
- and two sets of passwords are required both of which which
- can lead to synchronization problems between the UNIX and Windows
- systems and confusion for users.</P
-><P
->We divide the unifed logon problem for UNIX machines into
- three smaller problems:</P
-><P
-></P
-><UL
-><LI
-><P
->Obtaining Windows NT user and group information
- </P
-></LI
-><LI
-><P
->Authenticating Windows NT users
- </P
-></LI
-><LI
-><P
->Password changing for Windows NT users
- </P
-></LI
-></UL
-><P
->Ideally, a prospective solution to the unified logon problem
- would satisfy all the above components without duplication of
- information on the UNIX machines and without creating additional
- tasks for the system administrator when maintaining users and
- groups on either system. The winbind system provides a simple
- and elegant solution to all three components of the unifed logon
- problem.</P
-></DIV
-><DIV
-CLASS="SECT1"
-><HR><H1
-CLASS="SECT1"
-><A
-NAME="AEN20"
->What Winbind Provides</A
-></H1
-><P
->Winbind unifies UNIX and Windows NT account management by
- allowing a UNIX box to become a full member of a NT domain. Once
- this is done the UNIX box will see NT users and groups as if
- they were native UNIX users and groups, allowing the NT domain
- to be used in much the same manner that NIS+ is used within
- UNIX-only environments.</P
-><P
->The end result is that whenever any
- program on the UNIX machine asks the operating system to lookup
- a user or group name, the query will be resolved by asking the
- NT domain controller for the specied domain to do the lookup.
- Because Winbind hooks into the operating system at a low level
- (via the NSS name resolution modules in the C library) this
- redirection to the NT domain controller is completely
- transparent.</P
-><P
->Users on the UNIX machine can then use NT user and group
- names as they would use "native" UNIX names. They can chown files
- so that they are owned by NT domain users or even login to the
- UNIX machine and run a UNIX X-Window session as a domain user.</P
-><P
->The only obvious indication that Winbind is being used is
- that user and group names take the form DOMAIN\user and
- DOMAIN\group. This is necessary as it allows Winbind to determine
- that redirection to a domain controller is wanted for a particular
- lookup and which trusted domain is being referenced.</P
-><P
->Additionally, Winbind provides a authentication service
- that hooks into the Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) system
- to provide authentication via a NT domain to any PAM enabled
- applications. This capability solves the problem of synchronizing
- passwords between systems as all passwords are stored in a single
- location (on the domain controller).</P
-><DIV
-CLASS="SECT2"
-><HR><H2
-CLASS="SECT2"
-><A
-NAME="AEN27"
->Target Uses</A
-></H2
-><P
->Winbind is targeted at organizations that have an
- existing NT based domain infrastructure into which they wish
- to put UNIX workstations or servers. Winbind will allow these
- organizations to deploy UNIX workstations without having to
- maintain a separate account infrastructure. This greatly simplies
- the administrative overhead of deploying UNIX workstations into
- a NT based organization.</P
-><P
->Another interesting way in which we expect Winbind to
- be used is as a central part of UNIX based appliances. Appliances
- that provide file and print services to Microsoft based networks
- will be able to use Winbind to provide seamless integration of
- the appliance into the domain.</P
-></DIV
-></DIV
-><DIV
-CLASS="SECT1"
-><HR><H1
-CLASS="SECT1"
-><A
-NAME="AEN31"
->How Winbind Works</A
-></H1
-><P
->The winbind system is designed around a client/server
- architecture. A long running <B
-CLASS="COMMAND"
->winbindd</B
-> daemon
- listens on a UNIX domain socket waiting for requests
- to arrive. These requests are generated by the NSS and PAM
- clients and processed sequentially.</P
-><P
->The technologies used to implement winbind are described
- in detail below.</P
-><DIV
-CLASS="SECT2"
-><HR><H2
-CLASS="SECT2"
-><A
-NAME="AEN36"
->Microsoft Remote Procedure Calls</A
-></H2
-><P
->Over the last two years, efforts have been underway
- by various Samba Team members to decode various aspects of
- the Microsoft Remote Procedure Call (MSRPC) system. This
- system is used for most network related operations between
- Windows NT machines including remote management, user authentication
- and print spooling. Although initially this work was done
- to aid the implementation of Primary Domain Controller (PDC)
- functionality in Samba, it has also yielded a body of code which
- can be used for other purposes.</P
-><P
->Winbind uses various MSRPC calls to enumerate domain users
- and groups and to obtain detailed information about individual
- users or groups. Other MSRPC calls can be used to authenticate
- NT domain users and to change user passwords. By directly querying
- a Windows PDC for user and group information, winbind maps the
- NT account information onto UNIX user and group names.</P
-></DIV
-><DIV
-CLASS="SECT2"
-><HR><H2
-CLASS="SECT2"
-><A
-NAME="AEN40"
->Name Service Switch</A
-></H2
-><P
->The Name Service Switch, or NSS, is a feature that is
- present in many UNIX operating systems. It allows system
- information such as hostnames, mail aliases and user information
- to be resolved from dierent sources. For example, a standalone
- UNIX workstation may resolve system information from a series of
- flat files stored on the local lesystem. A networked workstation
- may first attempt to resolve system information from local files,
- then consult a NIS database for user information or a DNS server
- for hostname information.</P
-><P
->The NSS application programming interface allows winbind
- to present itself as a source of system information when
- resolving UNIX usernames and groups. Winbind uses this interface,
- and information obtained from a Windows NT server using MSRPC
- calls to provide a new source of account enumeration. Using standard
- UNIX library calls, one can enumerate the users and groups on
- a UNIX machine running winbind and see all users and groups in
- a NT domain plus any trusted domain as though they were local
- users and groups.</P
-><P
->The primary control le for NSS is <TT
-CLASS="FILENAME"
->/etc/nsswitch.conf
- </TT
->. When a UNIX application makes a request to do a lookup
- the C library looks in <TT
-CLASS="FILENAME"
->/etc/nsswitch.conf</TT
->
- for a line which matches the service type being requested, for
- example the "passwd" service type is used when user or group names
- are looked up. This config line species which implementations
- of that service should be tried andin what order. If the passwd
- config line is:</P
-><P
-><B
-CLASS="COMMAND"
->passwd: files example</B
-></P
-><P
->then the C library will first load a module called
- <TT
-CLASS="FILENAME"
->/lib/libnss_files.so</TT
-> followed by
- the module <TT
-CLASS="FILENAME"
->/lib/libnss_example.so</TT
->. The
- C library will dynamically load each of these modules in turn
- and call resolver functions within the modules to try to resolve
- the request. Once the request is resolved the C library returns the
- result to the application.</P
-><P
->This NSS interface provides a very easy way for Winbind
- to hook into the operating system. All that needs to be done
- is to put <TT
-CLASS="FILENAME"
->libnss_winbind.so</TT
-> in <TT
-CLASS="FILENAME"
->/lib/</TT
->
- then add "winbind" into <TT
-CLASS="FILENAME"
->/etc/nsswitch.conf</TT
-> at
- the appropriate place. The C library will then call Winbind to
- resolve user and group names.</P
-></DIV
-><DIV
-CLASS="SECT2"
-><HR><H2
-CLASS="SECT2"
-><A
-NAME="AEN56"
->Pluggable Authentication Modules</A
-></H2
-><P
->Pluggable Authentication Modules, also known as PAM,
- is a system for abstracting authentication and authorization
- technologies. With a PAM module it is possible to specify different
- authentication methods for dierent system applications without
- having to recompile these applications. PAM is also useful
- for implementing a particular policy for authorization. For example,
- a system administrator may only allow console logins from users
- stored in the local password file but only allow users resolved from
- a NIS database to log in over the network.</P
-><P
->Winbind uses the authentication management and password
- management PAM interface to integrate Windows NT users into a
- UNIX system. This allows Windows NT users to log in to a UNIX
- machine and be authenticated against a suitable Primary Domain
- Controller. These users can also change their passwords and have
- this change take eect directly on the Primary Domain Controller.
- </P
-><P
->PAM is congured by providing control files in the directory
- <TT
-CLASS="FILENAME"
->/etc/pam.d/</TT
-> for each of the services that
- require authentication. When an authentication request is made
- by an application the PAM code in the C library looks up this
- control file to determine what modules to load to do the
- authentication check and in what order. This interface makes adding
- a new authentication service for Winbind very easy, all that needs
- to be done is that the <TT
-CLASS="FILENAME"
->pam_winbind.so</TT
-> module
- is copied to <TT
-CLASS="FILENAME"
->/lib/security/</TT
-> and the pam
- control files for relevant services are updated to allow
- authentication via winbind. See the PAM documentation
- for more details.</P
-></DIV
-><DIV
-CLASS="SECT2"
-><HR><H2
-CLASS="SECT2"
-><A
-NAME="AEN64"
->User and Group ID Allocation</A
-></H2
-><P
->When a user or group is created under Windows NT
- is it allocated a numerical relative identier (RID). This is
- slightly dierent to UNIX which has a range of numbers which are
- used to identify users, and the same range in which to identify
- groups. It is winbind's job to convert RIDs to UNIX id numbers and
- vice versa. When winbind is congured it is given part of the UNIX
- user id space and a part of the UNIX group id space in which to
- store Windows NT users and groups. If a Windows NT user is
- resolved for the first time, it is allocated the next UNIX id from
- the range. The same process applies for Windows NT groups. Over
- time, winbind will have mapped all Windows NT users and groups
- to UNIX user ids and group ids.</P
-><P
->The results of this mapping are stored persistently in
- a ID mapping database held in a tdb database). This ensures that
- RIDs are mapped to UNIX IDs in a consistent way.</P
-></DIV
-><DIV
-CLASS="SECT2"
-><HR><H2
-CLASS="SECT2"
-><A
-NAME="AEN68"
->Result Caching</A
-></H2
-><P
->An active system can generate a lot of user and group
- name lookups. To reduce the network cost of these lookups winbind
- uses a caching scheme based on the SAM sequence number supplied
- by NT domain controllers. User or group information returned
- by a PDC is cached by winbind along with a sequence number also
- returned by the PDC. This sequence number is incremented by
- Windows NT whenever any user or group information is modied. If
- a cached entry has expired, the sequence number is requested from
- the PDC and compared against the sequence number of the cached entry.
- If the sequence numbers do not match, then the cached information
- is discarded and up to date information is requested directly
- from the PDC.</P
-></DIV
-></DIV
-><DIV
-CLASS="SECT1"
-><HR><H1
-CLASS="SECT1"
-><A
-NAME="AEN71"
->Installation and Configuration</A
-></H1
-><P
->The easiest way to install winbind is by using the packages
- provided in the <TT
-CLASS="FILENAME"
->pub/samba/appliance/</TT
->
- directory on your nearest
- Samba mirror. These packages provide snapshots of the Samba source
- code and binaries already setup to provide the full functionality
- of winbind. This setup is a little more complex than a normal Samba
- build as winbind needs a small amount of functionality from a
- development code branch called SAMBA_TNG.</P
-><P
->Once you have installed the packages you should read
- the <B
-CLASS="COMMAND"
->winbindd(8)</B
-> man page which will provide you
- with conguration information and give you sample conguration files.
- You may also wish to update the main Samba daemons smbd and nmbd)
- with a more recent development release, such as the recently
- announced Samba 2.2 alpha release.</P
-></DIV
-><DIV
-CLASS="SECT1"
-><HR><H1
-CLASS="SECT1"
-><A
-NAME="AEN77"
->Limitations</A
-></H1
-><P
->Winbind has a number of limitations in its current
- released version which we hope to overcome in future
- releases:</P
-><P
-></P
-><UL
-><LI
-><P
->Winbind is currently only available for
- the Linux operating system, although ports to other operating
- systems are certainly possible. For such ports to be feasible,
- we require the C library of the target operating system to
- support the Name Service Switch and Pluggable Authentication
- Modules systems. This is becoming more common as NSS and
- PAM gain support among UNIX vendors.</P
-></LI
-><LI
-><P
->The mappings of Windows NT RIDs to UNIX ids
- is not made algorithmically and depends on the order in which
- unmapped users or groups are seen by winbind. It may be difficult
- to recover the mappings of rid to UNIX id mapping if the file
- containing this information is corrupted or destroyed.</P
-></LI
-><LI
-><P
->Currently the winbind PAM module does not take
- into account possible workstation and logon time restrictions
- that may be been set for Windows NT users.</P
-></LI
-><LI
-><P
->Building winbind from source is currently
- quite tedious as it requires combining source code from two Samba
- branches. Work is underway to solve this by providing all
- the necessary functionality in the main Samba code branch.</P
-></LI
-></UL
-></DIV
-><DIV
-CLASS="SECT1"
-><HR><H1
-CLASS="SECT1"
-><A
-NAME="AEN89"
->Conclusion</A
-></H1
-><P
->The winbind system, through the use of the Name Service
- Switch, Pluggable Authentication Modules, and appropriate
- Microsoft RPC calls have allowed us to provide seamless
- integration of Microsoft Windows NT domain users on a
- UNIX system. The result is a great reduction in the administrative
- cost of running a mixed UNIX and NT network.</P
-></DIV
-></DIV
-></BODY
-></HTML
-> \ No newline at end of file