[Samba] Speeding up 'getent passwd' with winbindd on AD

Gautier, B (Bob) Bob.Gautier at rabobank.com
Thu May 4 13:33:05 GMT 2006


I am working on a Linux-AD integration using winbindd in security=ads
mode with idmap=ad.

Everything is basically working, but the performance of user (and group)
enumeration has been very poor and I am almost at the stage where I ask
my users if they can live without it, though I would prefer not to.

In my test environment, I have about 8500 users in AD, of which
currently only about 10 have the necessary attributes to make them valid
Linux users.  When I try to enumerate the users, I notice that winbindd
gets the list of *all* users in AD, and then (in idmap_ad) it makes an
LDAP query per-user for the SFU attributes (e.g. uidNumber etc).  Most
of those queries fail, of course.

By changing the LDAP filter (in winbindd_ads.c, function
query_user_list) from "(objectClass=user)" to (for example)
"(&(objectClass=user)(uidNumber=*))", i.e. by asking *only* for users
that have a uidNumber attribute, I have reduced a response time of 4
minutes for 'getent passwd' down to only 6 seconds.

I'd really like to see a change like this go into Samba, but I realise
the new filter isn't compatible with other idmap backends, and so at
best it needs to be optional.  Currently I have a patch which applies
the filter only if 'winbind nss info = sfu' in in effect.

I'm posting this here to get feedback: should I file an enhancement
request in Bugzilla, refine the fix somehow first, or forget it
altogether?

Bob Gautier
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