PAM configuration for Windows Active Directory
Task
If you want to configure OS4X to authentificate users with the configured username via a centralized Windows Active Directory service, you have to configure the PAM security system of the underlying Unix environment.
This documentation is based on the OS4Xvirtual VMware image, which is based on the latest Debian Linux distribution. If you have any other distribution, you may re-use these information in order to configure your environment accordingly.
Configuring the connectivity consists of several steps, which are described here:
Declarations
In this documentation, several values will be used for hostnames, domain name, usernames and password. These are only examples and must be changed according to your environment.
AD server:
Hostname: win2k8 (192.168.1.65, name resolving works via an another DNS server; FQDN: win2k8.sbs.c-works.net) Domain name: w2k8.c-works.net
User for connecting to domain (with administrative rights, but without permission to login interactively on AD server):
Username: pamauth Password: Test4321
User to be authentificated (as an example) and configured in OS4X:
Username: os4xuser Password: Test1234
All commands on the Linux side are executed in the context of the user "root".
Network availability
The AD server must be reachable via network on the Linux side:
os4xvirtual:~# ping -c 3 win2k8 PING win2k8.sbs.c-works.net (192.168.1.65) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 192.168.1.65: icmp_req=1 ttl=128 time=0.762 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.65: icmp_req=2 ttl=128 time=0.737 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.65: icmp_req=3 ttl=128 time=0.659 ms --- win2k8.sbs.c-works.net ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2013ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.659/0.719/0.762/0.049 ms
Synchronize time
The underlying security model relies on synchronized time between (Active Directory) server and (Linux OS4X) client). Windows Active Directory servers offer a NTP server which can be used for time synchronization.
ntpdate win2k8