[Samba] distributing samba users to the local systems

Xen list at xenhideout.nl
Tue Jul 12 00:10:41 UTC 2016


I want to ask what is the most common approach, and most functional 
smallest-subset-technology approach to achieving the following.


- a samba server is using different users for its clients and these 
users are general unix users, owning files and whatnot on the fs.

- a linux system as client now wants to "import" the users from the 
server without making them /fixed/ unix/passwd users on the local system

- the users need to be imported from a kind of directory service (ldap 
or whatever) or perhaps "active directory" or whatever it might be, and 
those extra virtual users are only valid for as long as the samba shares 
themselves are valid and accessible.

Mind you, I know nothing about "active directory" or "domain 
controllers" or what it might be. I also have very little understanding 
of what "nsswitch" is and the documentation for it and the entire system 
itself seems to be rather arcane.

It would require on the client:
- an additional source of local users that cannot actually be logged in 
to, but only serve as user interface elements.
Perhaps these local users would need to be mapped onto random numbers or 
something, but normally with unix extensions you see the raw numbers of 
the users on the central system (server).

So either those numbers would need to be replaced by names at domain while 
crossing the link and then mapped back to new numbers on the local 
system, that has imported the names at domain, or you'd need to find a 
fixed "range" of numbers for users that can stay fixed from system to 
system.

I haven't even been able to get idmapping to work for NFS, it just won't 
work. I was using a "static" file for that but the thing would never 
read the static maps.

It would require on the server:

- a set of local users transformed into a directory service that clients 
can import or know about.


Is this possible and what technologies would I need for it?



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