&author.jerry; &author.jht; DavidBannon Samba Team

dbannon@samba.org

(26 Apr 2001) Before you continue reading in this chapter, please make sure that you are comfortable with configuring basic files services in smb.conf and how to enable and administer password encryption in Samba. Theses two topics are covered in the smb.conf(5) manpage. This article outlines the steps necessary for configuring Samba as a PDC. It is necessary to have a working Samba server prior to implementing the PDC functionality. Domain logons for Windows NT 4.0 / 200x / XP Professional clients. Placing Windows 9x / Me clients in user level security Retrieving a list of users and groups from a Samba PDC to Windows 9x / Me / NT / 200x / XP Professional clients Roaming Profiles Network/System Policies Roaming Profiles and System/Network policies are advanced network administration topics that are covered separately in this document. The following functionalities are new to the Samba 3.0 release: Windows NT 4 domain trusts Adding users via the User Manager for Domains The following functionalities are NOT provided by Samba 3.0: SAM replication with Windows NT 4.0 Domain Controllers (i.e. a Samba PDC and a Windows NT BDC or vice versa) Acting as a Windows 2000 Domain Controller (i.e. Kerberos and Active Directory) Please note that Windows 9x / Me / XP Home clients are not true members of a domain for reasons outlined in this article. Therefore the protocol for support Windows 9x-style domain logons is completely different from NT4 / Win2k type domain logons and has been officially supported for some time. MS Windows XP Home edition is NOT able to join a domain and does not permit the use of domain logons. Implementing a Samba PDC can basically be divided into 3 broad steps. Configuring the Samba PDC Creating machine trust accounts and joining clients to the domain Adding and managing domain user accounts There are other minor details such as user profiles, system policies, etc... However, these are not necessarily specific to a Samba PDC as much as they are related to Windows NT networking concepts. The first step in creating a working Samba PDC is to understand the parameters necessary in smb.conf. Here we attempt to explain the parameters that are covered in the smb.conf man page. Here is an example smb.conf for acting as a PDC: [global] ; Basic server settings netbios name = POGO workgroup = NARNIA ; we should act as the domain and local master browser os level = 64 preferred master = yes domain master = yes local master = yes ; security settings (must user security = user) security = user ; encrypted passwords are a requirement for a PDC encrypt passwords = yes ; support domain logons domain logons = yes ; where to store user profiles? logon path = \\%N\profiles\%u ; where is a user's home directory and where should it be mounted at? logon drive = H: logon home = \\homeserver\%u ; specify a generic logon script for all users ; this is a relative **DOS** path to the [netlogon] share logon script = logon.cmd ; necessary share for domain controller [netlogon] path = /usr/local/samba/lib/netlogon read only = yes write list = ntadmin ; share for storing user profiles [profiles] path = /export/smb/ntprofile read only = no create mask = 0600 directory mask = 0700 There are a couple of points to emphasize in the above configuration. Encrypted passwords must be enabled. For more details on how to do this, refer to ENCRYPTION.html. The server must support domain logons and a [netlogon] share The server must be the domain master browser in order for Windows client to locate the server as a DC. Please refer to the various Network Browsing documentation included with this distribution for details. Samba 3.0 offers a complete implementation of group mapping between Windows NT groups and Unix groups (this is really quite complicated to explain in a short space). A machine trust account is a Samba account that is used to authenticate a client machine (rather than a user) to the Samba server. In Windows terminology, this is known as a "Computer Account." The password of a machine trust account acts as the shared secret for secure communication with the Domain Controller. This is a security feature to prevent an unauthorized machine with the same NetBIOS name from joining the domain and gaining access to domain user/group accounts. Windows NT, 200x, XP Professional clients use machine trust accounts, but Windows 9x / Me / XP Home clients do not. Hence, a Windows 9x / Me / XP Home client is never a true member of a domain because it does not possess a machine trust account, and thus has no shared secret with the domain controller. A Windows PDC stores each machine trust account in the Windows Registry. A Samba-3 PDC also has to stoe machine trust account information in a suitable back-end data store. With Samba-3 there can be multiple back-ends for this including: smbpaswd - the plain ascii file stored used by earlier versions of Samba. This file configuration option requires a Unix/Linux system account for EVERY entry (ie: both for user and for machine accounts). This file will be located in the private directory (default is /usr/local/samba/lib/private or on linux /etc/samba). smbpasswd_nua - This file is independant of the system wide user accounts. The use of this back-end option requires specification of the "non unix account range" option also. It is called smbpasswd and will be located in the private directory. tdbsam - a binary database backend that will be stored in the private directory in a file called passwd.tdb. The key benefit of this binary format file is that it can store binary objects that can not be accomodated in the traditional plain text smbpasswd file. tdbsam_nua like the smbpasswd_nua option above, this file allows the creation of arbitrary user and machine accounts without requiring that account to be added to the system (/etc/passwd) file. It too requires the specification of the "non unix account range" option in the [globals] section of the smb.conf file. ldapsam - An LDAP based back-end. Permits the LDAP server to be specified. eg: ldap://localhost or ldap://frodo.murphy.com ldapsam_nua - LDAP based back-end with no unix account requirement, like smbpasswd_nua and tdbsam_nua above. A Samba PDC, however, stores each machine trust account in two parts, as follows: A Samba account, stored in the same location as user LanMan and NT password hashes (currently smbpasswd). The Samba account possesses and uses only the NT password hash. A corresponding Unix account, typically stored in /etc/passwd. (Future releases will alleviate the need to create /etc/passwd entries.) There are two ways to create machine trust accounts: Manual creation. Both the Samba and corresponding Unix account are created by hand. "On-the-fly" creation. The Samba machine trust account is automatically created by Samba at the time the client is joined to the domain. (For security, this is the recommended method.) The corresponding Unix account may be created automatically or manually. The first step in manually creating a machine trust account is to manually create the corresponding Unix account in /etc/passwd. This can be done using vipw or other 'add user' command that is normally used to create new Unix accounts. The following is an example for a Linux based Samba server: root# /usr/sbin/useradd -g 100 -d /dev/null -c "machine nickname" -s /bin/false machine_name$ root# passwd -l machine_name$ On *BSD systems, this can be done using the 'chpass' utility: root# chpass -a "machine_name$:*:101:100::0:0:Workstation machine_name:/dev/null:/sbin/nologin" The /etc/passwd entry will list the machine name with a "$" appended, won't have a password, will have a null shell and no home directory. For example a machine named 'doppy' would have an /etc/passwd entry like this: doppy$:x:505:501:machine_nickname:/dev/null:/bin/false Above, machine_nickname can be any descriptive name for the client, i.e., BasementComputer. machine_name absolutely must be the NetBIOS name of the client to be joined to the domain. The "$" must be appended to the NetBIOS name of the client or Samba will not recognize this as a machine trust account. Now that the corresponding Unix account has been created, the next step is to create the Samba account for the client containing the well-known initial machine trust account password. This can be done using the smbpasswd(8) command as shown here: root# smbpasswd -a -m machine_name where machine_name is the machine's NetBIOS name. The RID of the new machine account is generated from the UID of the corresponding Unix account. Manually creating a machine trust account using this method is the equivalent of creating a machine trust account on a Windows NT PDC using the "Server Manager". From the time at which the account is created to the time which the client joins the domain and changes the password, your domain is vulnerable to an intruder joining your domain using a a machine with the same NetBIOS name. A PDC inherently trusts members of the domain and will serve out a large degree of user information to such clients. You have been warned! The second (and recommended) way of creating machine trust accounts is simply to allow the Samba server to create them as needed when the client is joined to the domain. Since each Samba machine trust account requires a corresponding Unix account, a method for automatically creating the Unix account is usually supplied; this requires configuration of the add user script option in smb.conf. This method is not required, however; corresponding Unix accounts may also be created manually. Below is an example for a RedHat 6.2 Linux system. [global] # <...remainder of parameters...> add user script = /usr/sbin/useradd -d /dev/null -g 100 -s /bin/false -M %u The procedure for joining a client to the domain varies with the version of Windows. Windows 2000 When the user elects to join the client to a domain, Windows prompts for an account and password that is privileged to join the domain. A Samba administrative account (i.e., a Samba account that has root privileges on the Samba server) must be entered here; the operation will fail if an ordinary user account is given. The password for this account should be set to a different password than the associated /etc/passwd entry, for security reasons. The session key of the Samba administrative account acts as an encryption key for setting the password of the machine trust account. The machine trust account will be created on-the-fly, or updated if it already exists. Windows NT If the machine trust account was created manually, on the Identification Changes menu enter the domain name, but do not check the box "Create a Computer Account in the Domain." In this case, the existing machine trust account is used to join the machine to the domain. If the machine trust account is to be created on-the-fly, on the Identification Changes menu enter the domain name, and check the box "Create a Computer Account in the Domain." In this case, joining the domain proceeds as above for Windows 2000 (i.e., you must supply a Samba administrative account when prompted). I cannot include a '$' in a machine name. A 'machine name' in (typically) /etc/passwd of the machine name with a '$' appended. FreeBSD (and other BSD systems?) won't create a user with a '$' in their name. The problem is only in the program used to make the entry, once made, it works perfectly. So create a user without the '$' and use vipw to edit the entry, adding the '$'. Or create the whole entry with vipw if you like, make sure you use a unique User ID ! I get told "You already have a connection to the Domain...." or "Cannot join domain, the credentials supplied conflict with an existing set.." when creating a machine trust account. This happens if you try to create a machine trust account from the machine itself and already have a connection (e.g. mapped drive) to a share (or IPC$) on the Samba PDC. The following command will remove all network drive connections: C:\WINNT\> net use * /d Further, if the machine is a already a 'member of a workgroup' that is the same name as the domain you are joining (bad idea) you will get this message. Change the workgroup name to something else, it does not matter what, reboot, and try again. The system can not log you on (C000019B).... I joined the domain successfully but after upgrading to a newer version of the Samba code I get the message, "The system can not log you on (C000019B), Please try again or consult your system administrator" when attempting to logon. This occurs when the domain SID stored in the secrets.tdb database is changed. The most common cause of a change in domain SID is when the domain name and/or the server name (netbios name) is changed. The only way to correct the problem is to restore the original domain SID or remove the domain client from the domain and rejoin. The domain SID may be reset using either the smbpasswd or rpcclient utilities. The machine trust account for this computer either does not exist or is not accessible. When I try to join the domain I get the message "The machine account for this computer either does not exist or is not accessible". What's wrong? This problem is caused by the PDC not having a suitable machine trust account. If you are using the add user script method to create accounts then this would indicate that it has not worked. Ensure the domain admin user system is working. Alternatively if you are creating account entries manually then they have not been created correctly. Make sure that you have the entry correct for the machine trust account in smbpasswd file on the Samba PDC. If you added the account using an editor rather than using the smbpasswd utility, make sure that the account name is the machine NetBIOS name with a '$' appended to it ( i.e. computer_name$ ). There must be an entry in both /etc/passwd and the smbpasswd file. Some people have reported that inconsistent subnet masks between the Samba server and the NT client have caused this problem. Make sure that these are consistent for both client and server. When I attempt to login to a Samba Domain from a NT4/W2K workstation, I get a message about my account being disabled. This problem is caused by a PAM related bug in Samba 2.2.0. This bug is fixed in 2.2.1. Other symptoms could be unaccessible shares on NT/W2K member servers in the domain or the following error in your smbd.log: passdb/pampass.c:pam_account(268) PAM: UNKNOWN ERROR for User: %user% At first be ensure to enable the useraccounts with smbpasswd -e %user%, this is normally done, when you create an account. In order to work around this problem in 2.2.0, configure the account control flag in /etc/pam.d/samba file as follows: account required pam_permit.so If you want to remain backward compatibility to samba 2.0.x use pam_permit.so, it's also possible to use pam_pwdb.so. There are some bugs if you try to use pam_unix.so, if you need this, be ensure to use the most recent version of this file. There are many sources of information available in the form of mailing lists, RFC's and documentation. The docs that come with the samba distribution contain very good explanations of general SMB topics such as browsing. What are some diagnostics tools I can use to debug the domain logon process and where can I find them? One of the best diagnostic tools for debugging problems is Samba itself. You can use the -d option for both smbd and nmbd to specify what 'debug level' at which to run. See the man pages on smbd, nmbd and smb.conf for more information on debugging options. The debug level can range from 1 (the default) to 10 (100 for debugging passwords). Another helpful method of debugging is to compile samba using the gcc -g flag. This will include debug information in the binaries and allow you to attach gdb to the running smbd / nmbd process. In order to attach gdb to an smbd process for an NT workstation, first get the workstation to make the connection. Pressing ctrl-alt-delete and going down to the domain box is sufficient (at least, on the first time you join the domain) to generate a 'LsaEnumTrustedDomains'. Thereafter, the workstation maintains an open connection, and therefore there will be an smbd process running (assuming that you haven't set a really short smbd idle timeout) So, in between pressing ctrl alt delete, and actually typing in your password, you can gdb attach and continue. Some useful samba commands worth investigating: testparam | more smbclient -L //{netbios name of server} An SMB enabled version of tcpdump is available from http://www.tcpdup.org/. Ethereal, another good packet sniffer for Unix and Win32 hosts, can be downloaded from http://www.ethereal.com. For tracing things on the Microsoft Windows NT, Network Monitor (aka. netmon) is available on the Microsoft Developer Network CD's, the Windows NT Server install CD and the SMS CD's. The version of netmon that ships with SMS allows for dumping packets between any two computers (i.e. placing the network interface in promiscuous mode). The version on the NT Server install CD will only allow monitoring of network traffic directed to the local NT box and broadcasts on the local subnet. Be aware that Ethereal can read and write netmon formatted files. How do I install 'Network Monitor' on an NT Workstation or a Windows 9x box? Installing netmon on an NT workstation requires a couple of steps. The following are for installing Netmon V4.00.349, which comes with Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0, on Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0. The process should be similar for other version of Windows NT / Netmon. You will need both the Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Install CD and the Workstation 4.0 Install CD. Initially you will need to install 'Network Monitor Tools and Agent' on the NT Server. To do this Goto Start - Settings - Control Panel - Network - Services - Add Select the 'Network Monitor Tools and Agent' and click on 'OK'. Click 'OK' on the Network Control Panel. Insert the Windows NT Server 4.0 install CD when prompted. At this point the Netmon files should exist in %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\netmon\*.*. Two subdirectories exist as well, parsers\ which contains the necessary DLL's for parsing the netmon packet dump, and captures\. In order to install the Netmon tools on an NT Workstation, you will first need to install the 'Network Monitor Agent' from the Workstation install CD. Goto Start - Settings - Control Panel - Network - Services - Add Select the 'Network Monitor Agent' and click on 'OK'. Click 'OK' on the Network Control Panel. Insert the Windows NT Workstation 4.0 install CD when prompted. Now copy the files from the NT Server in %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\netmon\*.* to %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\netmon\*.* on the Workstation and set permissions as you deem appropriate for your site. You will need administrative rights on the NT box to run netmon. To install Netmon on a Windows 9x box install the network monitor agent from the Windows 9x CD (\admin\nettools\netmon). There is a readme file located with the netmon driver files on the CD if you need information on how to do this. Copy the files from a working Netmon installation. The following is a list if helpful URLs and other links: Home of Samba site http://samba.org. We have a mirror near you ! The Development document on the Samba mirrors might mention your problem. If so, it might mean that the developers are working on it. See how Scott Merrill simulates a BDC behavior at http://www.skippy.net/linux/smb-howto.html. Although 2.0.7 has almost had its day as a PDC, David Bannon will keep the 2.0.7 PDC pages at http://bioserve.latrobe.edu.au/samba going for a while yet. Misc links to CIFS information http://samba.org/cifs/ NT Domains for Unix http://mailhost.cb1.com/~lkcl/ntdom/ FTP site for older SMB specs: ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/developr/drg/CIFS/ How do I get help from the mailing lists? There are a number of Samba related mailing lists. Go to http://samba.org, click on your nearest mirror and then click on Support and then click on Samba related mailing lists. For questions relating to Samba TNG go to http://www.samba-tng.org/ It has been requested that you don't post questions about Samba-TNG to the main stream Samba lists. If you post a message to one of the lists please observe the following guide lines : Always remember that the developers are volunteers, they are not paid and they never guarantee to produce a particular feature at a particular time. Any time lines are 'best guess' and nothing more. Always mention what version of samba you are using and what operating system its running under. You should probably list the relevant sections of your smb.conf file, at least the options in [global] that affect PDC support. In addition to the version, if you obtained Samba via CVS mention the date when you last checked it out. Try and make your question clear and brief, lots of long, convoluted questions get deleted before they are completely read ! Don't post html encoded messages (if you can select colour or font size its html). If you run one of those nifty 'I'm on holidays' things when you are away, make sure its configured to not answer mailing lists. Don't cross post. Work out which is the best list to post to and see what happens, i.e. don't post to both samba-ntdom and samba-technical. Many people active on the lists subscribe to more than one list and get annoyed to see the same message two or more times. Often someone will see a message and thinking it would be better dealt with on another, will forward it on for you. You might include partial log files written at a debug level set to as much as 20. Please don't send the entire log but enough to give the context of the error messages. (Possibly) If you have a complete netmon trace ( from the opening of the pipe to the error ) you can send the *.CAP file as well. Please think carefully before attaching a document to an email. Consider pasting the relevant parts into the body of the message. The samba mailing lists go to a huge number of people, do they all need a copy of your smb.conf in their attach directory? How do I get off the mailing lists? To have your name removed from a samba mailing list, go to the same place you went to to get on it. Go to http://lists.samba.org, click on your nearest mirror and then click on Support and then click on Samba related mailing lists. Or perhaps see here Please don't post messages to the list asking to be removed, you will just be referred to the above address (unless that process failed in some way...) A domain and a workgroup are exactly the same thing in terms of network browsing. The difference is that a distributable authentication database is associated with a domain, for secure login access to a network. Also, different access rights can be granted to users if they successfully authenticate against a domain logon server. Samba-3 does this now in the same way that MS Windows NT/2K. The SMB client logging on to a domain has an expectation that every other server in the domain should accept the same authentication information. Network browsing functionality of domains and workgroups is identical and is explained in this documentation under the browsing discussions. It should be noted, that browsing is totally orthogonal to logon support. Issues related to the single-logon network model are discussed in this section. Samba supports domain logons, network logon scripts, and user profiles for MS Windows for workgroups and MS Windows 9X/ME clients which are the focus of this section. When an SMB client in a domain wishes to logon it broadcast requests for a logon server. The first one to reply gets the job, and validates its password using whatever mechanism the Samba administrator has installed. It is possible (but very stupid) to create a domain where the user database is not shared between servers, i.e. they are effectively workgroup servers advertising themselves as participating in a domain. This demonstrates how authentication is quite different from but closely involved with domains. Using these features you can make your clients verify their logon via the Samba server; make clients run a batch file when they logon to the network and download their preferences, desktop and start menu. Before launching into the configuration instructions, it is worthwhile lookingat how a Windows 9x/ME client performs a logon: The client broadcasts (to the IP broadcast address of the subnet it is in) a NetLogon request. This is sent to the NetBIOS name DOMAIN<1c> at the NetBIOS layer. The client chooses the first response it receives, which contains the NetBIOS name of the logon server to use in the format of \\SERVER. The client then connects to that server, logs on (does an SMBsessetupX) and then connects to the IPC$ share (using an SMBtconX). The client then does a NetWkstaUserLogon request, which retrieves the name of the user's logon script. The client then connects to the NetLogon share and searches for this and if it is found and can be read, is retrieved and executed by the client. After this, the client disconnects from the NetLogon share. The client then sends a NetUserGetInfo request to the server, to retrieve the user's home share, which is used to search for profiles. Since the response to the NetUserGetInfo request does not contain much more the user's home share, profiles for Win9X clients MUST reside in the user home directory. The client then connects to the user's home share and searches for the user's profile. As it turns out, you can specify the user's home share as a sharename and path. For example, \\server\fred\.profile. If the profiles are found, they are implemented. The client then disconnects from the user's home share, and reconnects to the NetLogon share and looks for CONFIG.POL, the policies file. If this is found, it is read and implemented. The main difference between a PDC and a Windows 9x logon server configuration is that Password encryption is not required for a Windows 9x logon server. Windows 9x/ME clients do not possess machine trust accounts. Therefore, a Samba PDC will also act as a Windows 9x logon server. There are a few comments to make in order to tie up some loose ends. There has been much debate over the issue of whether or not it is ok to configure Samba as a Domain Controller in security modes other than USER. The only security mode which will not work due to technical reasons is SHARE mode security. DOMAIN and SERVER mode security is really just a variation on SMB user level security. Actually, this issue is also closely tied to the debate on whether or not Samba must be the domain master browser for its workgroup when operating as a DC. While it may technically be possible to configure a server as such (after all, browsing and domain logons are two distinctly different functions), it is not a good idea to so. You should remember that the DC must register the DOMAIN#1b NetBIOS name. This is the name used by Windows clients to locate the DC. Windows clients do not distinguish between the DC and the DMB. For this reason, it is very wise to configure the Samba DC as the DMB. Now back to the issue of configuring a Samba DC to use a mode other than "security = user". If a Samba host is configured to use another SMB server or DC in order to validate user connection requests, then it is a fact that some other machine on the network (the "password server") knows more about user than the Samba host. 99% of the time, this other host is a domain controller. Now in order to operate in domain mode security, the "workgroup" parameter must be set to the name of the Windows NT domain (which already has a domain controller, right?) Therefore configuring a Samba box as a DC for a domain that already by definition has a PDC is asking for trouble. Therefore, you should always configure the Samba DC to be the DMB for its domain.