[Samba] Running off pre-created keytabs

[Rowland Penny]

On Fri, 11 Jan 2019 09:39:35 +0100
"Osipov, Michael via samba" <samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:

> Am 2019-01-10 um 17:02 schrieb Rowland Penny via samba:
> > On Thu, 10 Jan 2019 16:23:06 +0100
> > "Osipov, Michael via samba" <samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:
> > 
> >> Hi folks,
> >>
> >> we'd like to provision new Samba servers (file sharing only) with
> >> the system keytab. It will precreated by some other process
> >> (msktutil) because we don't have direct access to a domain admin
> >> account. Is there any degragation in functionality by not using
> >> "secrets and keytab" and not doing "net ads join"?
> >>
> >> This is somewhat similiar to my question from 2017-11 [1] where I
> >> wanted to do "net ads join" with precreated accounts, but haven't
> >> really found a usable solution.
> >>
> >> Michael
> >>
> >>
> >> [1] https://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/2017-November/211945.html
> >>
> > 
> > There is an interesting fact, if you add:
> > 
> >      dedicated keytab file = /etc/krb5.keytab
> >      kerberos method = secrets and keytab
> > 
> > to smb.conf and then join the domain with:
> > 
> > net ads join -U Administrator (or another user capable of joining
> > machines)
> > 
> > You will get the computers account created in AD and the keytab
> > created, so why do you feel the need to precreate the machines in AD
> > and use an extra package to join the domain ?
> 
> As depicted, this still requires an admin to be present at the box. I 
> have to constantly beg people with that kind of permission to do a 
> session with us to kinit and then join servers or create SPNs which
> do not match the FQDN. If the account can be precreated one can do
> this asynchronously and I'd remove the dependency on relying on
> specific people.
> 
> While it sounds for you trivial to have an admin account, in our huge 
> new forest (Siemens and MS claim it to be the largest one on the
> planet) it is very strict about permissions after severe incident in
> the last forest. It took us weeks to find someone who is willing to
> join our servers once in a while. I guess this can be/is the case in
> many large companies. Morover, I will request a server which shall
> precreate machine accounts. This will make us independent from
> humans, but Samba won't play well with that. At last, if the
> colleague is on sick leave or else and we have to reset the account
> for whatsoever reason, we are bust!
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Michael
> 

I am with Louis here, this definitely says more about your company than
you or Samba. To put it bluntly, it appears that they do not trust you,
otherwise they would have given you delegated powers to join computers.

Rowland