| Everything you wanted to know about making Active Directory work with Linux |
Sep. 16, 2005
I'm jealous.
I had wanted to write this article. I had planned it out in my head. But with one thing or another, I never got around to it. And now it's too late.
Jason Perlow, writing at InformIT, has done a bang-up job on explaining how to use Active Directory with Linux.
This is not an easy job.
It's one thing to coordinate Linux and Windows users using Samba with NT-style domains. I've done that many times myself, and I've written up some of the basics at Linux-Watch's brother site, The Channel Insider.
Active Directory, though, that's trickier.
You can, as Perlow explains, do it with Samba winbind, but, as he points out, it's not easy. It may be the cheapest way to do it in terms of money, but you're going to make up for it in time, with hours spent manually tweaking the /etc/smb.conf file and getting other configuration files just right.
I know. I've been there, done that, and I didn't even get a lousy t-shirt.
Winbind is also slow. Really slow.
I've found that you can speed things up by redirecting idmap functions using an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) server, but Perlow is right when he notes that this can complicate matters.
Still, in my experience, if you want to do this on the cheap, and you know LDAP well and something about AD (Active Directory), you can spend a fair amount of time setting it up, but you end up with an AD-based Linux-and-Windows network that authenticates users on large networks before they die of old age.
There are, however, Perlow points out, better ways.
One in particular, that I need to spend more time on myself, is VAS (Vintela Authentication Services).
The company's slogan is: "One Password, One Logon; One Time."
As an old network administrator, I love the sound of that!
I've played with Vintela just enough to know that I want to get my hands on a copy and see if it lives up to my initial impressions.
OK, so it, along with a similar approach using Microsoft's own SFU (Services for Unix) 3.5, requires you to add Schema Extensions to your AD forest.
You know what, though? While that bugs Jason, I can live with Schema Extensions. Of course, I'd also point a blunderbuss at anyone who touches the AD schema from that time forever on, for fear they'd foul it up.
However, once you've got the Extensions in place, it works quite well in my experience.
Enough of my thoughts on the matter. Go read Perlow's article if you want to know more about how to use AD with Linux.
Considering what a headache that can be, you'll be glad, very glad, you did.
--Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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