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winbindd(8)





NAME

       winbindd - Name Service Switch daemon for resolving names from NT
       servers


SYNOPSIS

       winbindd [-D] [-F] [-S] [-i] [-Y] [-d <debug level>]
        [-s <smb config file>] [-n]


DESCRIPTION

       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 configuraiton the idmap uid
       and idmap gid parameters are 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 throught 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:

       -D
           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.

       hosts
           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.

       passwd
           User information traditionally stored in the passwd(5) file and
           used by getpwent(3) functions.

       group
           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; Linux users should us libnss_wins.so
           hosts:          files dns winbind

       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


OPTIONS

       -F
           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.

       -S
           If specified, this parameter causes winbindd to log to standard
           output rather than a file.

       -d|--debuglevel=level
           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 smb.conf file.

       -V
           Prints the program version number.

       -s <configuration 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
           smb.conf for more information. The default configuration file name
           is determined at compile time.

       -l|--log-basename=logdirectory
           Base directory name for log/debug files. The extension ".progname"
           will be appended (e.g. log.smbclient, log.smbd, etc...). The log
           file is never removed by the client.

       -h|--help
           Print a summary of command line options.

       -i
           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.

       -n
           Disable caching. This means winbindd will always 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.

       -Y
           Single daemon mode. This means winbindd will run as a single
           process (the mode of operation in Samba 2.2). Winbindd's default
           behavior is to launch a child process that is responsible for
           updating expired cache entries.


NAME AND ID RESOLUTION

       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.

       See the idmap domains or the old idmap backend parameters in smb.conf
       for options for sharing this database, such as via LDAP.


CONFIGURATION

       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.

       o    winbind separator

       o    idmap uid

       o    idmap gid

       o    idmap backend

       o    winbind cache time

       o    winbind enum users

       o    winbind enum groups

       o    template homedir

       o    template shell

       o    winbind use default domain

       o    winbind: rpc only Setting this parameter forces winbindd to use
           RPC instead of LDAP to retrieve information from Domain
           Controllers.


EXAMPLE SETUP

       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

       Note
       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 smbnet program
       like this:

       smbnet 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 uid = 10000-20000
                   idmap gid = 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.


NOTES

       The following notes are useful when configuring and running winbindd:

       nmbd(8) must be running on the local machine for winbindd to work.

       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 backend is configured.

       If the the Windows NT SID to UNIX user and group id mapping file is
       damaged or destroyed then the mappings will be lost.


SIGNALS

       The following signals can be used to manipulate the winbindd daemon.

       SIGHUP
           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.

       SIGUSR2
           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.


FILES

       /etc/nsswitch.conf(5)
           Name service switch configuration file.

       /tmp/.winbindd/pipe
           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 /tmp/.winbindd
           directory and /tmp/.winbindd/pipe file are owned by root.

       $LOCKDIR/winbindd_privileged/pipe
           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 $LOCKDIR/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
           $LOCKDIR/winbindd_privileged directory and
           $LOCKDIR/winbindd_privileged/pipe file are owned by root.

       /lib/libnss_winbind.so.X
           Implementation of name service switch library.

       $LOCKDIR/winbindd_idmap.tdb
           Storage for the Windows NT rid to UNIX user/group id mapping. The
           lock directory is specified when Samba is initially compiled using
           the --with-lockdir option. This directory is by default
           /usr/local/samba/var/locks .

       $LOCKDIR/winbindd_cache.tdb
           Storage for cached user and group information.


VERSION

       This man page is correct for version 3.0 of the Samba suite.


SEE ALSO

       nsswitch.conf(5), samba(7), wbinfo(1), ntlm_auth(8), smb.conf(5),
       pam_winbind(8)


AUTHOR

       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.

Samba 3.0                         05/28/2008                       WINBINDD(8)

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