winbindd — Name Service Switch daemon for resolving names from NT servers
winbindd [-D|--daemon] [-i|--interactive] [-F|--foreground] [--no-process-group] [-n|--no-caching] [-d <debug level>] [--debug-stdout] [--configfile=<configuration file>] [--option=<name>=<value>] [-l|--log-basename <log directory>] [--leak-report] [--leak-report-full] [-V|--version]
This program is part of the samba(7) suite.
winbindd is a daemon that provides
a number of services to the Name Service Switch capability found
in most modern C libraries, to arbitrary applications via PAM
and ntlm_auth and to Samba itself.
Even if winbind is not used for nsswitch, it still provides a
service to smbd, ntlm_auth
and the pam_winbind.so PAM module, by managing connections to
domain controllers. In this configuration the
idmap config * : range
parameter is not required. (This is known as `netlogon proxy only mode'.)
The Name Service Switch allows user
and system information to be obtained from different databases
services such as NIS or DNS. The exact behaviour can be configured
through the /etc/nsswitch.conf file.
Users and groups are allocated as they are resolved to a range
of user and group ids specified by the administrator of the
Samba system.
The service provided by winbindd is called `winbind' and
can be used to resolve user and group information from a
Windows NT server. The service can also provide authentication
services via an associated PAM module.
The pam_winbind module supports the
auth, account
and password
module-types. It should be noted that the
account module simply performs a getpwnam() to verify that
the system can obtain a uid for the user, as the domain
controller has already performed access control. If the
libnss_winbind library has been correctly
installed, or an alternate source of names configured, this should always succeed.
The following nsswitch databases are implemented by the winbindd service:
This feature is only available on IRIX.
User information traditionally stored in
the hosts(5) file and used by
gethostbyname(3) functions. Names are
resolved through the WINS server or by broadcast.
User information traditionally stored in
the passwd(5) file and used by
getpwent(3) functions.
Group information traditionally stored in
the group(5) file and used by
getgrent(3) functions.
For example, the following simple configuration in the
/etc/nsswitch.conf file can be used to initially
resolve user and group information from /etc/passwd
and /etc/group and then from the
Windows NT server.
passwd: files winbind group: files winbind ## only available on IRIX: use winbind to resolve hosts: # hosts: files dns winbind ## All other NSS enabled systems should use libnss_wins.so like this: hosts: files dns wins
The following simple configuration in the
/etc/nsswitch.conf file can be used to initially
resolve hostnames from /etc/hosts and then from the
WINS server.
hosts: files wins
If specified, this parameter causes
the server to operate as a daemon. That is, it detaches
itself and runs in the background on the appropriate port.
This switch is assumed if winbindd is
executed on the command line of a shell.
Tells winbindd to not
become a daemon and detach from the current terminal. This
option is used by developers when interactive debugging
of winbindd is required.
winbindd also logs to standard output,
as if the -S parameter had been given.
If specified, this parameter causes
the main winbindd process to not daemonize,
i.e. double-fork and disassociate with the terminal.
Child processes are still created as normal to service
each connection request, but the main process does not
exit. This operation mode is suitable for running
winbindd under process supervisors such
as supervise and svscan
from Daniel J. Bernstein's daemontools
package, or the AIX process monitor.
Do not create a new process group for winbindd.
Disable some caching. This means winbindd will often have to wait for a response from the domain controller before it can respond to a client and this thus makes things slower. The results will however be more accurate, since results from the cache might not be up-to-date. This might also temporarily hang winbindd if the DC doesn't respond. This does not disable the samlogon cache, which is required for group membership tracking in trusted environments.
level is an integer from 0
to 10. The default value if this parameter is not
specified is 0.
The higher this value, the more detail will be logged to the log files about the activities of the server. At level 0, only critical errors and serious warnings will be logged. Level 1 is a reasonable level for day-to-day running - it generates a small amount of information about operations carried out.
Levels above 1 will generate considerable amounts of log data, and should only be used when investigating a problem. Levels above 3 are designed for use only by developers and generate HUGE amounts of log data, most of which is extremely cryptic.
Note that specifying this parameter here will override
the log level parameter in the
${prefix}/etc/smb.conf file.
This will redirect debug output to STDOUT. By default server daemons are logging to a log file.
The file specified contains the configuration details
required by the server. The information in this file
includes server-specific information such as what
printcap file to use, as well as descriptions of all
the services that the server is to provide. See
${prefix}/etc/smb.conf for more information. The default
configuration file name is determined at compile
time.
Set the smb.conf(5) option "<name>" to value "<value>" from the command line. This overrides compiled-in defaults and options read from the configuration file. If a name or a value includes a space, wrap whole --option=name=value into quotes.
Base directory name for log/debug files. The parent process uses filename log.winbindd, the child process uses filename log.wb-<name>. The log file is never removed by winbindd.
Enable talloc leak reporting on exit.
Enable full talloc leak reporting on exit.
Prints the program version number.
Print a summary of command line options.
Display brief usage message.
Users and groups on a Windows NT server are assigned
a security id (SID) which is globally unique when the
user or group is created. To convert the Windows NT user or group
into a unix user or group, a mapping between SIDs and unix user
and group ids is required. This is one of the jobs that
winbindd performs.
As winbindd users and groups are resolved from a server, user and group ids are allocated from a specified range. This is done on a first come, first served basis, although all existing users and groups will be mapped as soon as a client performs a user or group enumeration command. The allocated unix ids are stored in a database and will be remembered.
WARNING: The SID to unix id database is the only location where the user and group mappings are stored by winbindd. If this store is deleted or corrupted, there is no way for winbindd to determine which user and group ids correspond to Windows NT user and group rids.
Configuration of the winbindd daemon
is done through configuration parameters in the smb.conf(5) file. All parameters should be specified in the
[global] section of smb.conf.
winbind: rpc only Setting this parameter forces winbindd to use RPC instead of LDAP to retrieve information from Domain Controllers.
To setup winbindd for user and group lookups plus authentication from a domain controller use something like the following setup. This was tested on an early Red Hat Linux box.
In /etc/nsswitch.conf put the
following:
passwd: files winbind group: files winbind
In /etc/pam.d/* replace the
auth lines with something like this:
auth required /lib/security/pam_securetty.so
auth required /lib/security/pam_nologin.so
auth sufficient /lib/security/pam_winbind.so
auth required /lib/security/pam_unix.so \
use_first_pass shadow nullok
The PAM module pam_unix has recently replaced the module pam_pwdb. Some Linux systems use the module pam_unix2 in place of pam_unix.
Note in particular the use of the sufficient
keyword and the use_first_pass keyword.
Now replace the account lines with this:
account required /lib/security/pam_winbind.so
The next step is to join the domain. To do that use the
net program like this:
net join -S PDC -U Administrator
The username after the -U can be any
Domain user that has administrator privileges on the machine.
Substitute the name or IP of your PDC for "PDC".
Next copy libnss_winbind.so to
/lib and pam_winbind.so
to /lib/security. A symbolic link needs to be
made from /lib/libnss_winbind.so to
/lib/libnss_winbind.so.2. If you are using an
older version of glibc then the target of the link should be
/lib/libnss_winbind.so.1.
Finally, setup a smb.conf(5) containing directives like the following:
[global]
winbind separator = +
winbind cache time = 10
template shell = /bin/bash
template homedir = /home/%D/%U
idmap config * : range = 10000-20000
workgroup = DOMAIN
security = domain
password server = *
Now start winbindd and you should find that your user and
group database is expanded to include your NT users and groups,
and that you can login to your unix box as a domain user, using
the DOMAIN+user syntax for the username. You may wish to use the
commands getent passwd and getent group
to confirm the correct operation of winbindd.
The following notes are useful when configuring and
running winbindd:
PAM is really easy to misconfigure. Make sure you know what you are doing when modifying PAM configuration files. It is possible to set up PAM such that you can no longer log into your system.
If more than one UNIX machine is running winbindd,
then in general the user and groups ids allocated by winbindd will not
be the same. The user and group ids will only be valid for the local
machine, unless a shared idmap config * : backend is configured.
If the Windows NT SID to UNIX user and group id mapping file is damaged or destroyed then the mappings will be lost.
The following signals can be used to manipulate the
winbindd daemon.
Reload the smb.conf(5) file and apply any parameter changes to the running version of winbindd. This signal also clears any cached user and group information. The list of other domains trusted by winbindd is also reloaded.
Instead of sending a SIGHUP signal, a request to reload configuration file may be sent using smbcontrol(1) program.
The SIGUSR2 signal will cause
winbindd to write status information to the winbind
log file.
Log files are stored in the filename specified by the log file parameter.
/etc/nsswitch.conf(5)Name service switch configuration file.
The UNIX pipe over which clients communicate with
the winbindd program. For security reasons, the
winbind client will only attempt to connect to the winbindd daemon
if both the ${prefix}/var/run/winbindd directory
and ${prefix}/var/run/winbindd/pipe file are owned by
root.
winbindd socket directory overrides this default.
The UNIX pipe over which 'privileged' clients
communicate with the winbindd program. For security
reasons, access to some winbindd functions - like those needed by
the ntlm_auth utility - is restricted. By default,
only users in the 'root' group will get this access, however the administrator
may change the group permissions on $STATEDIR/winbindd_privileged to allow
programs like 'squid' to use ntlm_auth.
Note that the winbind client will only attempt to connect to the winbindd daemon
if both the $STATEDIR/winbindd_privileged directory
and $STATEDIR/winbindd_privileged/pipe file are owned by
root.
state dir controls what $STATEDIR refers to.
Implementation of name service switch library.
Storage for the Windows NT rid to UNIX user/group
id mapping. The directory is specified when Samba is initially
compiled using the
--with-statedir option or state dir.
The default directory in this installation is ${prefix}/var/locks
.
Storage for cached user and group information.
The original Samba software and related utilities were created by Andrew Tridgell. Samba is now developed by the Samba Team as an Open Source project similar to the way the Linux kernel is developed.
wbinfo and winbindd were
written by Tim Potter.
The conversion to DocBook for Samba 2.2 was done by Gerald Carter. The conversion to DocBook XML 4.2 for Samba 3.0 was done by Alexander Bokovoy.