Enumerating Unix users and groups from Windows

[simo]

On Mon, 2008-07-28 at 10:37 +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> On Jul 27 17:14, Volker Lendecke wrote:
> > On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 12:40:32PM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> > > Ok, I'll put that on my TODO list, but it might take some time.
> > > Accessing the user lists is something only very seldom used, when the
> > > user generates a new /etc/passwd of /etc/group file, so it's not *that*
> > > high on my priority list.
> > 
> > Ok.
> > 
> > > What do you have in mind posix-wise?  In terms of accessing symlinks and
> > 
> > One thing that might be transferred this way is the login
> > shell and home directory information.
> 
> Indeed.  But the Unix User/Group entries are only used for a useful
> ls(1) and stat(1) output.  It won't be possible to use these user
> accounts for a login or something.  What I have on my TODO list for a
> later release is AD LDAP access per RFC 2307 to get user and group
> entries.  This would allow us to get rid of /etc/passwd and /etc/group
> entirely in AD environments.

Just make sure you can enable/disable that behavior as a configuration
option. It is not uncommon to find "experiments" that are not used
anymore, but user accounts are still dirty; in samba too you  have to
explicitly configure idmap_ad (and tell it which schema you want to
use).

Simo.

-- 
Simo Sorce
Samba Team GPL Compliance Officer <simo at samba.org>
Senior Software Engineer at Red Hat Inc. <ssorce at redhat.com>