Small problem with LDAP-UX and Windows AD - root-login not possible if AD is unavailable

[Danny Petterson - DK]

Hi Gurus!

We are, with great success actually, using LDAP-UX-client to authenticate against Windows AD, for login...which works very nicely.

However...if the network is not working, or for some reason the AD-servers are not available, we can't log onto the servers, not even as root on the console.

For HP Server the feature "offline caching" can be used, but is not available for AD-integration. Thats not an option then.

But how do we do it then? Some kind of timeout-setting?

Would very much appreciate your help.

Thanks
Danny Petterson

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Danny,

root needs to not authenticate via ADS.

nsswitch.conf should have login do files before ADS and root neesd to not authenticate via windows.

You can have a root user in windows and let root do things such as write logs to windows shares, but full integration is a bad idea and is not recommended by experienced systems administrators.

SEP

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

I realized my earlier post could be confusing:

From /etc/nsswitch.conf

passwd: files ldap
group: files ldap


This will cause authentication to go to files first, which will avoid the issue you are running into.

SEP

[Danny Petterson - DK]

Hi Steven!

Thanks a log for your answer.

Maybe my mail was a bit short, sorry.

First of all, root is of course a local user, and nsswitch.conf does look like the one you showed me. However, same problem though.

I do wonder is anything like this would do a difference?

passwd: files [SUCCESS=return] ldap

Again, thank you very much for your time.

Greetings from
Danny Petterson

[Hans Hosang]

Danny,

I have a similar situation on one of my test systems and I solved it like this:

nsswitch.conf has:
passwd: files ldap
group: files ldap

pam.conf has:
# Authentication management
#
login auth required libpam_hpsec.so.1
login auth required libpam_updbe.so.1
login auth sufficient libpam_krb5.so.1
login auth required libpam_unix.so.1

Mind: this lists libpam_updbe and this primciple lets you make exceptions for specific users like root.
The file pam_user.conf gives you the opportunity to specify which users and how they should be authenticated:
in my case:
root auth libpam_krb5.so.1 ignore
root auth Libpam_unix.so.1 try_first_pass

I hope this helps out.
Hans Hosang

[Danny Petterson - DK]

Hi!

Thank you very much for your replies.

I did test your solution, however it did not change anything, it still ends up timing out before I can log onto the server.

It does look like the problem is more related to DNS, as if I change the retrans to something like 500, I can log onto the box from console, as root, even if the network is not accessable.

But I have learned a lot from this thread, again, thank you very much.

Yours
Danny