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"Seamless" Integration of Mac OS X w/ Active Directory
eexlebots asks: "I work for a small college which has a few Mac OS X 10.2 machines and a fairly standard Active Directory setup. Actual deployment of these clients rides on getting them to authenticate at login to our Active Directory server. Apple has stated that this is possible (easy! seamless!) with Jaguar without the use of an additional Mac OS X server, but I have found the case to be quite different. It is possible, but not without a good deal of nightmarish configuration issues. Documentation? HA! No sign of it anywhere on Apple's site. I'm not alone: at macwindows.com I found a good many people who think that Apple's claims of seamless Windows Network integration to be a bad joke and nothing more. I was wondering who else out there is having this problem, and what they have done to solve it."
Active desktop and Active directory are *slightly* different...
It isn't exactly in Microsoft's best interest to make this easy for them is it?
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)
Get rid of that stupid AD and install a real catalogue system like LDAP or NDS. Active Directory is made for Windows and nothing but windows. Making anything else to work with it is very hard and not worth it. What on earth do you need from AD that cannot be solved otherwise? If its just a matter of a few machines there shoudnt be any significant gain in ease of admin in AD. If there are plenty then you should install a MAC server. Microsoft does not and will never play nice with anything else but Microsoft.
HTTP/1.1 400
Step 1: plug into the network
Step 2: login using AD credentials
Step 3: There's no step 3! There's no step 3!
Not really. Apple has been partners with M$ for quite a while now. ANd you do know the best way to win users over is to make it easy to incorporate the new into the old.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Can't you just use Winbind from the SAMBA project to use AD authentication? Just configure Winbind to point to your Domain controller and setup NIS to work with it.
Or am I off base? I've done this on FreeBSD i386 boxes so it should not be difficult, unless Apple has mucked up logins.
I'm stating this at a very high-level perspective, but I know Samba is an actual component of OS X Server, and it is known to compile and install on OS X perfectly.
:)
So why not use Samba for integration to Active Directory? I'm not perfectly clear on the details of doing so, but I'm pretty sure you can use Kerberos to hook up to an AD domain, and go from there.
Any reason not to try? After all, Unix folk are generally pretty adamant about not reinventing the wheel
-brain
Active Directory is Microsoft's enterprise X.500-like security and authentication scheme. You set it up on a network of Windows servers and the clients all authenticate with those. Active Desktop is putting a webpage on your desktop.
Couldn't we just ask nicely for Microsoft to open up the APIs for Active Directory?
Oh wait they don't have to since this would involve Security, DRM, Authentication, Innovation, The Butterfly, etc...
If someone can make this work with MacOS, I'm sure linux/unix is not far away. Solaris supports LDAP and I'm sure so do a lot of other Unix os... and the fact that Active Directory can be accessed using LDAP queries does make you wonder why we don't have any linux/unix server connecting to Active directory as of today.
Active directory, just like any other MS stuff likes to maintain its own standards and its hard to get inside documentation on it on the web.
Solaris LDAP and linux LDAP implementations have a lot of problems. Its just not ready for Enterprise class networking. I sat on a simple netgroup bug for months before SUN came out with a patch. And linux doesn't even support netgroup as cleanly as Solaris yet.
Its a pain.... if MacOS X can solve all these hiccups ( and if they do manage to come out with a documentation) I'm sure it will inspire the other Unix environments.
rkt
If Apple really wants to make OSX compatible with the entrenched NOS's out there, they need to hire a few Active "Directory" and Netware engineers and teach them about the MAC as opposed to the other way around.
Keep passing the open windows...
Have you tried this?
I'm not sure what active directory is but I do know that using Jaguar, my machine can browse my windows network and connect to any shared folders very easily.
I also have it sharing folders out to the windows machines though it doesn't give out a listing of what's shared (probably for security reasons). You have to tell it what username, password and share you want to access.
What exactly are you trying to do?
I currently work in a smallish office with about 15 workstations and 3 or 4 different file servers. Our workstations are about 70% Mac and 30% Windows. The servers run FreeBSD 4.x, Linux (with a 2.2.x kernel) and Windows 2000/XP. On the FreeBSD/Linux servers we run two different versions of Samba (2.2.x & 2.0.x).
No matter which server we connect to, if we copy files from the Mac to the server using SMB as the protocol, we experience a significant amount of file corruption (it appears to be that there are just chunks of the file that don't get copied). It is repeatable, but doesn't happen every time. This is a serious inconvenience. I should also point out that we did NOT have this problem prior to upgrading to 10.2 (we also have upgraded to 10.2.1).
I've have sent numerous reports with details to Apple with no response.
--fp
Most likely, the configuration issues are with configuring the AD with the proper schema. When the AD is properly set up, then all you have to do is go into the Open Directory Assistant and create an LDAP service that is configured to use the Active Directory preset. Yes, it's a preset and so there is little or configuration on the OS X side. Once the LDAP service is created, then you select it as an authentication service (in the same utility) and you are done.
Apparently not. By entering "Active Directory under OS X" the very first entry is a PDF by Apple with instructions on page 35 on how to setup clients to authenticate to the active directory domain controller.
Here is the link for the uniniated:
MacOSXwithActiveDirectory.pdf
We are still in mixed mode and using connetix ( what a piece of crap product ) on a 9x mac, to authenticate to the NT side.
I worry that it will die when we go native in teh spring. And no upgrade to 10x in sight due to application issues. fun fun wish us luck !
---- Booth was a patriot ----
For a second I thought they were trying to make a rotten apple
Any idea how to take Active Desktop out of windows?
You know, slashdot really isn't as good of a search engine as Google.
1) Go to google.com
2) search for "active directory mac os x"
3) click the third result.
4) prof- nah.
Or you can click this link:
Integrating Mac OS X with Active Directory
Who said anything about Active Desktop?
reech bee-yond ur clip-0n
A quick google returns this as the first reference: MacOSXwithActiveDirectory.pdf.
All they lose out on, is the OS License. Which when purchased from a Dell, et al, isn't that significant. When a Mac gets roped into the AD network seamlessly, they still get revenue from a copy of Office so the user can share docs with other users (LOTS more profitable than Windows). Plus a few more CAL's as well, for the file server(s) as well as the exchange server(s). All in all, it's still a good revenue stream for MS.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
No, I've not tried it as I don't have anything which talks Active[sic] Directory, so YMMV.
A quick searc for Active Directory on the Apple website turns up these results:
this
this and the PDF linked to on that page can be found here
There ae also links on Apple's site to third pary sites which deal specificaly with Mac - PC network integration.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Just because OS X supports LDAP for authentication does not mean there will be seamless integration with Active Directory.
Active Directory (at least the MS implementation) is like a network-level "registry". It holds everything from integrated DNS records, to DHCP server authorization, users, permissions, replication controls and information....you get the idea.
To participate in most of this, you need to have client side stuff that can take advantage of all of this. OK, you get samba authentication without needing LDAP support on OS X, but who cares...that isn't enough for "seemless" integration.
Can you add users to OS X and have them appear in Active directory?....I don't think so.
Can you get your DHCP server (on OS X) to authenticate itself in Active Directory?...probably not.
Can you get user lists and permissions to replicate into OS X's user list? Maybe...but i'm still not sure about that.
Lastly...can you get a user to log into OS X and have OS X process login scripts replicated to domain controllers? Doubtful...most of the windows login scripts don't apply to the Unix world.
I may be wrong on this stuff. My experience with OS X has been a handful of workstations connecting to a windows file server via samba. It seems that the platforms are too far apart to get this "seemless" integration.
It appears the best you can do is simple user authentication....it might be worth it if the OS X server can get it's user list from the Active Directory machines. Does anyone know if this is possible? I'd love it if a Linux distribution could do that so I don't have to maintain two sets of user lists.
-ted
A disclaimer first: I haven't tried to do this on MacOS X, but just did the same for Linux; you can do it on any unix that supports PAM for authentication.
It is certainly possible, however I wouldn't call this integration a "seemless" one (I didn't use samba for that).
You can extend AD schema to support unix by using AD4Unix package.
After that you need to install nss_ldap and pam_ldap. A good starting point on how to configure these two can be found at Security Focus. You may want to use Kerberos for authentication, as pam_ldap transmits username and password over the network (although with SSL support this data will be encrypted).
Hope this helps,
AC
http://a1584.g.akamai.net/7/1584/51/7f99c60f0c08bf /www.apple.com/macosx/server/pdf/MacOSXwithActiveD irectory.pdf
As I mentioned earlier, we have Active Directory, as well as a Jag server. We had an Apple engineer here for two days, and not even he was able to get AD-style login-auth to work - the basics like proper mapping and creation of home dirs on network instead of local host and all that. It looks like Apple still has quite a bit of work to do here. On the bright side, I use Cmd-K to logon to any of the network shares, and the perms are correctly handled. But we are looking for a logon screen for OS X that uses our AD for auth, and so far nyet.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
Probable webpage on Microsoft.com:
"This link will let you download instructions on how to use Active Directory for 3rd part OS'es, such as MacOS. By clicking on this link, you agree to the following:
1) I will not redistribute this document
2) I will hyperlink to this document, bypassing this EULA.
3) I will not use the information contained wherein to bypass Windows security settings by authenticating any 3rd part OS via Active Directory ( DMCA )"
I don't have a sig...Do you??
Go to Google. Type "apple.com active.directory" in the search box, and mind the periods. The very first result is a PDF from Apple's site entitled "Integrating Mac OS X With Active Directory." (Just to be clear, that link is directly to the PDF, so don't click unless you're ready to download.) In it you can find step-by-step instructions for setting up both the clients (simple) and the server (complex, but only has to be done once).
Since you said in your submission, "Documentation? HA! No sign of it anywhere on Apple's site," it seems clear that you haven't read this document yet. Give it a try. As I wrote elsewhere, I don't have any Windows servers, but from reading the instructions, it looks like it will be very easy for you to set this up just the way you want it.
I write in my journal
Too bad about that "Flamebait" mod.......
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
It's in the Samba configuration. It's something like "OS Level" and it will be set to some number, like maybe 50.
This number is how MS machines determine who is the Primary Domain Controller, basically the one with the highest OS level gets it, unless things are specifically configured otherwise. IIRC, Windows NT 4 has an OS level in the low 30s. Newer versions of Windows have higher OS levels, and server versions have higher levels than workstation or desktop versions.
So, all you have to do is use SWAT, or otherwise edit smb.conf, and set your OS level to some low number, like 1.
This site is a good introduction with lots of useful tips. If you really need to know Samba, though, I highly recomend this book.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
What exactly is the difference between these?
/etc/passwd with the user's uid/gid/homedir (It IS possible to get around this with the "nolocal" option, but needless to say it only works for a limited subset of services), but that entry doesn't need a password set, just * (Which would disallow logins normally, in this case if pam_smb_auth clears the authentication, you can log in)
Or is AD just the authentication portion of SMB?
I know on RedHat systems, you can choose the pam_smb_auth PAM module to authenticate against a Windows domain controller. Pop in your domain and the server name, pam_smb_auth handles most of the rest. You still need a local entry in
I have this set up on a Linux box at work - At the moment I need to use adduser to create local accounts, but I don't need to give the users passwords - They use their current domain userid/pass.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Getting OS X working with AD can be done, but you need to do it with Samba. Read the Samba documentation, learn to use Samba, and you should have no problem getting your OS X systems to work with AD. This will require research, effort, and scariest of all, it will require editing text files and maybe even working with the command line, but with some time even a Mac user should figure it out.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm an IT admin, and we have Win2k running AD on our server, and we have 10+ Mac clients running OS 10.2. The key is, make sure the user accounts and the user alias on the domain controller are the same..meaning, if your user account is named joe smith, make sure the alias is the same. Hope that helps.
~~~ Nicole
My primary complaint against SMB is that it doesn't really work all that well. When I tried to look at the list of computers in Network Neighborhood, I often saw only a partial list (some computers that I knew were connected did not show up). The only way I could connect to these was by specifying their IP address. Other times, I could not access them at all (even though in some cases they could still access my machine!). I switched to Linux a while ago, and I have had similar results using SAMBA.
This leads me to believe that the fault for bad Windows Network performance lies not in the implementation (whether SMB on Windows, SAMBA on Linux, or the Apple implementation) but in the protocol itself.
Based on Apple's adverts of "seamless" we told people they'd be able to browse my organization's full list of local windows servers from MacOsX10.2's [Connect to Server] command. As stated in the linked article, it quickly became clear that browsing using active directory only works for severs on the local subnet. Fortunately, if you already know the name or address of the machine you're trying to connect to, you can log on directly by entering: . So far, this has worked just fine on non-local subnets.
So for my org, it's a mixed review. It's a long way from "seamless", but it's a LOT better connectivity than MacOS has ever had before. If Apple had advertised what they actually delivered ("Now you can log onto a windows server"), we'd be thrilled.
Jaguar's alleged Windows network integration is lacking to say the least. In my case it is that windows network browsing is limited to your subnet only, making it nearly useless. I.e. you don't see and can't get to (even nearly) everything when you browse. You CAN get to anything via typing in an appropriate smb URL in the "Connect To Server..." window, but obviously then you have to know the server is there.
Mind you, I have little to no need to do any of this anyway so it isn't a big deal to me, but if they're going to advertise seamless windows network integration then it ought to be that. I want $1 back for that alleged feature.
--- What?
I beg to differ about NDS on Windows ever being a problem.
I have no great love for Windows. Novell, I happen to like very much but it is cost prohibitive. But is NDS worth the money? Yes. Also, GroupWise is capable of driving Outlook properly, even better than my beloved OpenMail [RIP, now Samsung Contact - yeach, thanks Carly] was.
My experience since Novell 4.x (I've used it back in the bindery days as well) and NDS has been flawless. It supports DOS, WinALL, and anything else. It has native file sharing so it can appear as a Winderz box. The server is ugly as sin at the console, but it runs more reliably that one would ever imagine, I had several servers stay up for more than a year. The Novell client integration with Windows NT based operations systems is superior, supporting advanced network trashcans, robust undelete for idiots, and does interesting things like server side searches (as in, if you are looking for the word "cat" on a network file system, the server does the searching 'for you.'
Also, NDS is much more scaleable than ADS. It has the proper notion of root, it is possible to merge trunks together, if you've ever used ConsoleOne, you'll see more granularity on this directory and its objects than was ever dreamed possible, cleanly integrated and rather fast.
Is Novell run by intelligent business people? No. Are the products of incredible quality? Yes. Novell's image has been so heinously stained, with angry red color schemes, idiotic pictures of polyester clad fools running around on my console dancing or holding up red N's.
Novell needs to do only this: Change colors to blue or something, and rip out that licensing shit and start offering to replace ADS/Exchange with NDS/GroupWise for $100 bucks. All it costs them is a CD. It would cost Microsoft a lot of pain.
If you haven't given Novell a shot, please do,. You'll realize that the free stuff right now is primitive compared to NDS. Any other comments on good directory service implementations are welcome.
I just setup a Novell 6 server the other day to stay sharp with that stuff. Besides the fools in the marketing department over there, I was impressed with it. I would take a job working with Novell and Unix, but if someone wanted me to deal with Windows ADS or NT4 DS again, and not be open to Samba, I would probably not take the job or demand a premium.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Have you ever tried to get "Mac People"and "Windows People" to integrate. They run on the same hardware yet seem totally incompatible.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
http://acctsync.sf.net - It's difficult to deploy, but it works.
There are other such products, like PSych and NDS, which may be easier to work with.
Using this ensures that you don't have to rely on a Win2k LDAP network for authentication services ( read Win2k license for every AD replica, additional CALs )
But you can alternatively deploy an OpenLDAP set of replicas and have all your services/computers authenticate against them ( read free, their don't care how many you deploy or what you put into them ).
Microsoft not having Win2k play nice with others is having the beneficial side-effect of increasing their Win2k sales.
Hmmm... Hey! You think that was their plan to begin with?
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Had you actually *read* the document you linked to, rather than googling for forty seconds and then patting yourself on the back, you might have found that this is the sole reference to Active Directory:
The poster's problems are a very real issue and are well-deserving of a public question on Slashdot.four nine eighteen twenty-7 thirty-nine forty-7 fiftyeight sixty-nine seventy-9 eighty-8 one-hundred-and-nine one-twenty
It sounds like your real problem is getting AD to play nice with LDAP clients. The reason that Microsoft clients integrate "seamlessly" with AD is that they use some funky proprietary directory protocol, whereas everything else (Linux, Mac, etc.) speaks straight LDAP. I've found that 10.2 has pretty darn good LDAP integration, but getting it to work with Microsoft takes some accomodation on the AD side.
Remember that Macs use open protocols and tools for their Windows integration. Samba is used for the SMB stuff and LDAP for directories. Any time you're using proprietary MS protocols, you're going to run into problems. You'll run into the same situation with Linux, Novell, or anything non-MS. If your mandate is to make the Macs behave exactly like Windows, then they're setting you up for failure
That being said, you can really help yourself out by getting a 10.2 server to act as a bridge. Apple's OpenLDAP is still fairly young, but it really simplifies AD integration. With your modest requirements, you probably use an old iMac. The server software for 10.2 server is pretty cheap with educational discounts ($250 for 10 clients, $500 for unlimited), and it doesn't require much of a box. I'm using an iMac server to get a 20 station lab on AD and it works pretty well. You get some really cool deployment and workstation management tools, too. ;)
I hear you about the documentation, though. I don't mind so much, because I like tinkering with things and Apple's stuff is fairly intuitive. However, when you're just starting out, Apple's "Why would you need a manual?" attitude gets pretty annoying.
This
Ehrm. Not only do I have Windows machines, I have an OS X box, and my workstation is Linux.
Now, the windows boxes DO have random crashes regarding the TCP/IP stacks (Exception 0E), but that has nothing to do with Netware/NDS.
Stop spreading FUD, I've run NDS for 5 years, and logging into the server is not an issue. Sure, there can be other issues (client-side caching of shared documents - umm turn it off), but nothing that is specific to NDS.
Plus, with NDS, you don't even need Netware. (Oh, and it's also LDAP v3, so we've used it for web app auths also)
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
I read that sample chapter. It seems useless in relation to the topic. They list appletalk and netinfo as the legacy services, and then proceed to go into great detail on how to setup netinfo, not discussing any of the others at all... Why would we want to use the legacy directory service?
music lover since 1969
If you ever look at the properties in a typical user's account in AD vs LDAP you will get the screaming heebeejeebies!!! :)
LDAP user = a paragraph or two of logically arranged and named fields.
AD user = a page and a half of garble!
There's a reason MS has an AD "connector for LDAP" product (for a small fee).
AD might technically have the same modes of communication as LDAP but that's like saying just because I can use the same phone to call my Aunt and that friendly guy in Nigeria that they can and should talk to each other. (Okay, bad analogy, but I thought iwas funny.
So, to summarise for anyone who hasn't had the pleasure of attempting to integrate AD and LDAP, they ain't even close to compatible Jack!!
Apple, in its attempts to get into more enterprise accounts, has not learned that system administrators require documentation ad nauseum. They wrote their documentation for AD in the old 10.1 Server AD/LDAP PDF and in their System Administrators guide for 10.2 Server much too simply.
Recently I worked with Apple to receive an Xserve for two tests--getting a Macintosh to authenticate by AD (which is an LDAP superset) from login, and to provide authentication on file shares from AD using the Connect to Server command, where the shares would be provided by the Xserve.
I had no success in getting anything to work with 10.1 Server. After getting 10.2 Server from Apple, we had luck in getting authentication for file shares working. Part of the problem involved how LDAPv3 (the main component in Apple's Open Directory) relates to the AD schema. I'm not an AD expert, but Apple has got a "not-invented-here" mindset here; the LDAP components don't match up with with sysadmins expect. I was unable to get the login authentication component working at all.
As a result, I couldn't recommend an Xserve for my customers, and stuck in Services For Macintosh, a component in Windows 2000 Server that provides the same authentications to file shares by AD without the Xserve acting as a middleman for file sharing. It's got its own issues, but at least it worked as advertised; it took us only 5 minutes to set this up on a working W2K server.
Apple MUST have the documentation and software working and tested before making claims. This is a completely unacceptable way to sell their wares, and is worsening an already bad reputation for many in IT.
Just so you know, Macintosh system integration is my business, so I feel quite justified in flaming Apple for such a bad implementation. It's not really their technology, but how they sold this currently-snake oil concept to Mac professionals.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
... but how about porting your AD environment to Samba + LDAP on a unix-based Samba PDC?
;)
Save lots of $$$ on server licenses, and Win2k works fine in NT4 backwards-compatibility mode..
Depends on how many people, departments, etc.. But it could be a cost-effective solution.
As long as M$ isn't paying your college off, of course
Wow. Another RTFM post. Brilliant. So, I take it you read the actual Ask Slashdot question then, right? The part where he says he knows how to get it working, and wants to know if it has been this hard for everyone else to do so as well? Did ya read that part? Cause I don't think that ya did.
For reference:
"...It is possible, but not without a good deal of nightmarish configuration issues...I found a good many people who think that Apple's claims of seamless Windows Network integration to be a bad joke and nothing more." So that was the part where he says he knows how to do it. Now this is the exciting part... the ACTUAL question...
"...I was wondering who else out there is having this problem, and what they have done to solve it." Cool, huh? Reading story good! Reflex comments BAD! REFLEX BAD!
Now, you did find documentation on Apple's site so that's gotta be worth some points. +1 Informative to you. Of course, that's not really the point of his Ask Slashdot, so you get a +1 Moron because you can't read and a +3 Asshole because you've used this thread as a vehicle to vent your frustrations at the world. Your Karma is now -1 Idiot. Congratulations.
Now, for anyone else that feels inclined to add RTFM to this discussion, save your breath. We don't care. Post something useful, and if you're not willing to add your name to it, maybe that tells you a little bit about the message you're posting.
Thank god I'm not a moderator or my Dogma would crap on your Karma
One DOES...Microsoft's DHCP server must register itself with Active Directory. This keeps rogue DHCP servers off the network. This is a nice feature in a large organization. How many networks have been interupted by some bozo accedentally activating DHCP on his windows NT/2000 server box? I know of a few.
Sure, that doesn't stop the same bozo from enabling DHCP on his wireless access-point/router...but it does help.
I guess what I want is Linux or OS X to act like an Active Directory DC....to do all the things that Microsoft's AD-DC's do.
-ted
Uh, what the hell is the purpose of this article? Shouldn't this be under "Ask Slashdot" or perhaps "Senseless Ranting"?
Will do that. I think in the end, I think the benefits of few less win2k servers to maintain/buy is worth the client install.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
I work for a company that looked into it recently. We bought an XServe, read the docs, and when I tried to assemble it in a test environment (Fresh AD infrastructure, own address space, etc) I ran into problem after problem. Finally when all the people at the Apple Support Forums (http://discussions.info.apple.com/) we got an error. So I called apple support. Would they help? They said no. Would Apple Pro support help? They said no. They said "We can get you in touch with Apple Consulting Services to help you get it working."
WTF? I have to buy consulting? They won't even *help* you through it over the phone, they direct you to the discussion forums. Basically my point is that Apple won't even support vanilla test-only installs, let alone ones in production.
The way it basically works is that Apple's own LDAP flavor (OpenDirectory) only works with Apple clients. *But* you can make some additions to the Win2k/AD Schema (not that scary) and make it so Apple's OpenDirectory can read attributes (users and shares) from AD, letting AD users login locally to a mac. Great stuff, yet to see it work.
The documentation sends you all over the whitepaper, looking for info on how to do this and that, and leaves out crucial steps (enabling LDAPv2 in AD, for example, as well as enabling LDAPv2 write access).
I'm no apple basher, but at the very least they should stop saying it's easy.
Uhh, we're talking about extending an LDAP (MS AD) schema and maybe setting up Samba here. Not exactly friggin rocket science. I would suggest you read up some on LDAP and SMB, once you understand the basics of this stuff all will become clear to you. I would hardly call what is going on here a nightmare.
Keep in mind that nothing you are doing here would be at all new to someone who has used LDAP, or MS AD, in a Linux + Windows or Sun + Windows environment. Keep in mind that your shiny Mac is a Unix based machine and eperience and tools from other platforms will apply. Get off your ass and spend 5 minutes with google.
Is is possible you are just stupid? I read the site you linked to, most of these people are definately stupid. You have a MCSE right?
This may be OT, but mixed-mode doesn't have anything to do with how your clients authenticate. It has to do with what types of domain controllers you have. If you have nothing but Win2k DCs, you can run in native mode.
I'm running my ActiveDirectory in native mode and I have plenty of "downlevel" clients authenticating using the old NTLM protocols.
Having worked on Active Directory interoperability in Linux along with giving a presentation at the recent CIFS conference on the topic, I can speak to this issue with a certain degree of confidence.
My understand of the OS X client is that it doesn't contain true Active Directory client support. Instead, it relies on the fact that most AD installations are in mixed-mode where they still accept old client logins. In fact, only the bleeding edge versions of Samba actually support true Active Directory client login as it erquires some pretty obscure protocols that only recently have been understood (LDAP over UDP and other various nonsense).
Chances are, your network is in native-mode. That would kill your chances of using the native OS X CIFS clients (although Samba should allow you to access network resources if you use a beta 3.0 version).
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
And, while I understand that having Apple say "its easy" makes you want to blame them, you really ought to blame MS or yourselves for purchasing MS technology.Believe me, if it were my choice, we wouldn't have a single Windows machine on our network, either server or client. But it's not my decision to make. Given the reality that I am in a Windows shop, I do my best to make things work right. And, so far, OS X clients only work marginally well. Users can manually mount NT shares using their AD auth, but we'd relly prefer to see login screens at bootup authing against the AD. And that's where the problem lies. I agree that the problem is probably M$, but what can I do?
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
It is possible, but not without a good deal of nightmarish configuration issues. Documentation? HA! No sign of it anywhere on Apple's site.
But I thought Macs "just work"?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Apple haven't broken LDAP by modifying it. They are using OpenLDAP, which is published under an open source licence.
All they have done is provide a bridge and NetInfo schema such that current NetInfo account information can be published via LDAP directly from the NetInfo database. They're not the bad guys here.
i don't read slashdot anymore.
...when people complain about Apple not documenting when it is Microsoft's non-standard nonsense that caused the problem in the first place.
Just to clarify something, although Apple have included PAM in OS X 10.2, it's kind of useless, as /etc/pam.d/login isn't actually consulted at the login window.
yeah. brain dead and bloody annoying.
i don't read slashdot anymore.
You will need 10.2.
/Applications/Utilities, select Directory access. Select LDAPv3, click Configure, drop down the show options button, hit 'new', type a friendly name for your AD server, slap in its name or IP, Select Active Directory from the LDAP Mappings, use SSL if you want, fart around with the other options if you need to, OK everything, go back to Directory Access, Select Custom Path from the Search Drop Down, hit 'add', select '/LDAPv3/Your Friendly name'.
Browse to
Slap back wallop, you should now be authenticating with an AD server, seamlessly it is. Works Good for me, I dont like AD, but I really dont care, it authenticates me thats all I need, keeps management happy too, they love spending that money!!!.
T
Um, they're talking about Active DIRECTORY, not Active Desktop.
Totally different animal, until IE 7 comes out with Windows Longhorn.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
"It wasn't until this very column, titled Mac OS X with Active Desktop, until I realized how very stupid the humans at slashdot are...Active Desktop when the text clearly says Active Directory. Jeez, where does slashdot find them?"
/. are very stupid because they made a textual mistake between two like-sounding MS buzzwords? Are you saying that one has to follow MS's fads religiously to not be an idiot? heh.
All humans at
Now that's funny. Where did Slashdot find you?
The Active Directory documentation for Jaguar Server is now integrated into the Mac OS X Server 10.2 Admin Guide; from http://www.apple.com/server/resources.html:
2 015
Active Directory for Mac OS X Server v10.1: Learn how to integrate Mac OS X Server v10.1 with Microsoft Active Directory. (v10.2 customer, refer to the Administrators Guide for Active Directory integration documentation.)
The Mac OS X Server 10.2 Admin Guide is available from:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=12
Particularly, see:
Chapter 2: Directory Services (p.65)
Using an Active Directory server (p.104)
Using LDAP is the way to go, but when you already have a Windows-based authentication infrastructure in place, you don't necessarily have that option. Hence pam_smb_auth
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I had a excellent Novell experience today. :)
.htaccess file, you can point it to the NDS directory instead, very cool indeed, it would look something like this.
.organization [.context.organization]
I just installed a demo of Netware 6 today, I was amazed by the number of programs coming with the server as default, damn. Just look at the web admninistration.
When talking NDS, I discovered that now that Novell runs PHP,MySQL,Perl there is a greater reason to run apache web servers on it.
And what was even better, you can now authenticate users against your NDS in apache. cool. Just like you would use a
-----
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Secure_Site"
AuthNDSTree TREE_NAME
AuthNDSContext
AuthNDSRequireSSL [on|off]
require valid-user
order allow,deny
allow from all
---
It was very cool to see my php/mysql applications running on a netware server, I didn't need to change anything in the code, I imported my SQL data into MySQL and it was running.
my sig
most of these people are definately stupid. You have a MCSE right?
'nuf said
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
As a side note check out mod_auth_mysql - http://www.diegonet.com/support/mod_auth_mysql.sht ml
:)
to do user auth against mysql as an apache module, works like above.
There's also http://www.giuseppetanzilli.it/mod_auth_pgsql/
Novell is playing attention to the good stuff
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
I play it cool, and dig all jive ...
That's the reason I stay alive
Cool to find another Hughes fan on Slashdot.
As for that book, it spends too much time on basic
unix stuff like what a here document is. As a friend
of mine quipped, it should be called "Unix for Mac
OS X Users".
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Our method involves authenticating to AD via LDAPv3, and automouting a volume over SMB. We've just put this doc together over the last few hours, but will try and work more on it in the next few days. It can be found here at the bottom.
I just recently setup our Mac OS 10.2 server utilizing our Active Directory server. Here are some tips that may help.
1) Do not test with OS X Server. I used the Java LDAP browser, available at http://www.iit.edu/~gawojar/ldap/ to check for a proper connection. Once I got this to work where I could see the LDAP user data, I plugged those same settings (User/Password, search base, IP, etc) into Directory Access for OS X Server. OS X Server does not give as much diagnostic feedback when testing as the LDAP browser does.
2) Do not add a cn=Users to the search base. Yes it may be necessary, but OS X Server will do this for you. By adding it, you will have 2 cn=Users which breaks it. The search base should look something like dc=mydept,dc=mycompany,dc=com.
3) In Directory Access use the Active Directory template (not From Server, or Custom). In most cases this will work without any mappings making it a simple Directory Access setup.
Hope this helps
Rik
You have given me more information on OS X server than any of the Mac "salespeople" I have to deal with. It's greatly appreciated.
:)
...including the ability to change a clone into a master if the master fails...
We are mostly a PC shop, but my boss is a Mac nut....it might just be time to convince him to let me buy an OS X server
In fact, the AD replication process is actually fairly complex...
You said it! Have you ever configured two bridgehead servers? Ugh, no fun to set up, but it works pretty well once up and running.
I have to admit, the Active Directory replication process is pretty cool. It manages lots of info, does conflict resolution well, and does not need tight time synchronization.
Does the failover have to happen manually? I like the idea that if one of my AD-DCs fails, I automatically have another master (since all Active Directory domain controllers have a writeable copy of the Active Directory). Does OS X have the ability to "auto-promote" a slave to a master?
-ted
That's completely different, and you bloody well know it. This isn't an "embrace and extend" kind of extended... Apple is still running OpenLDAP, they haven't broken interopability at all, not like what Microsoft did with Kerberos/Active Directory at all. Any other LDAP client that implements the standard can still talk to Apple's install of OpenLDAP...
i don't read slashdot anymore.
If someone were to 'extend' the way that an LDAP consumer interacts with a supplier, there's an issue. As it is now, every set of LDAP software has its own way to handle direct replication of data.
/etc/passwd normally).
However, the type of information that can be placed into an LDAP directory is handled by the schemas.
In much the same way, a database server doesn't care what your table definitions are to maintain ODBC compliance.
Now, in this case, we have schemas, which much like a table definition, define what sort of information is allowed to be placed into the directory. It may be mail addributes, such as 'rfc822mailalias' and 'mailforwardingaddress', it might be posix authentication information, such as 'loginshell' and 'homedirectory'.
In this case, I have no idea what schema extentions OS X may require, but the standard posix attributes would make sense (ie, what you'd find in
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.