winbindd architecture

[Richard Sharpe]

Yuval Yeret wrote:

> A few technical questions about winbindd I didn't find answers for:
>
>  
>
> does the nss_winbind library connect over a unix domain socket to the 
> winbindd running as part of the nmbd ?
>

winbindd runs as a separate daemon. It does not, AFAIK, run as part of nmbd.

>  
>
> what is the communication, if any, between winbindd and nmbd, and why 
> does nmbd have to be running on a machine with winbind enabled for passwd.
>

winbind looks up the domain controller, by looking up <WORKGROUP><1C>. 
It does not need nmbd to do this. It just needs an NBNS running 
somewhere. We use WINS on an NT PDC.

>  
>
> From looking at the sources, It seems feasable to replace the unix 
> domain socket by a UDP/TCP socket. Did anyone try/think of this ?
>
>  
>

We have done that a Panasas, for, umm, technical reasons. It wasn't hard.

>  
>
> The reason is I want to run samba in a cluster and have nmbd running 
> in one node and smbd's running in multiple other nodes, using the nmbd 
> for the registration/lookup functions, and also for the winbind way of 
> authenticating users.
>
>  
>

Tell me more ... It seems feasible. We plan on doing it.

>  
>
> Has anybody done this ?
>
>  
>
>  
>

-- 
Richard Sharpe, rsharpe at ns.aus.com, rsharpe at samba.org, sharpe at ethereal.com
www.samba.org, www.ethereal.com, SAMS Teach Yourself Samba 
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