[Samba] Samba + sssd deployment: success and failure

[Robert Marcano]

On 6/12/19 12:43 PM, Goetz, Patrick G via samba wrote:
> On 6/12/19 11:10 AM, Rowland penny via samba wrote:
>>
>> Why are you using sssd on a standalone server ?
>>
>> your users will be in /etc/passwd and the Samba database, I don't think
>> sssd can talk to the Samba database.
>>
> 
> I'm pretty sure what happens when you set [server role = standalone] is
> that Samba then defers to /etc/nsswitch.conf for how authorization
> should happen, and since sss is listed there and is set up to query the
> AD domain, that's how users get authenticated.

Exactly this, as explained on a previous post, my domain joined servers 
just run winbind because it is needed to be running on recent Samba 
releases, but NSS is configured to use SSSD for users and groups 
discovery, and SSSD is setup to use AD.

> 
> In particular, it's not actually a standalone server but rather an AD
> domain member so that Security Group-authorized domain users can use
> their AD domain credentials for authentication on the machine.  There is
> an entire lab of linux workstations set up this way.  Users log in to a
> workstation using their AD credentials and their home directory (and
> various data/software directories) are automounted from the same
> fileserver we're trying to set Samba up on.  sssd also provides a
> caching service to assist with timely authorization.  As I mentioned
> previously, sssd bundles together the functionality of pam_ldap, nscd,
> and probably some other tools.  This was all working fine until we
> acquired the need to mount filesystems to a few Windows machines as well
> (due to some compute-intensive analysis software that runs only on Windows).
> 
> After doing some more reading about winbind (the 2007 Carter "Using
> Samba" book -- aside: why don't we have any updated Samba
> documentation?!  Will post separately about the state of the smb.conf
> man page), I have no a priori objections to using winbind instead of
> sssd.  In particular, I wasn't aware that winbind had a PAM hook
> allowing it to provide authentication for other services.  I do care
> about clean, modular system design, though:
> 
> 
> 
>       Other Services           | Autonomous     |
>         Requiring     ------>  | Authentication | <-----  Samba smbd
>       Authentication           | Service        |
>                                     |
>                                     |
>                                     v
>                        Can interface with LDAP/AD
> 
> 
> It looks like the thing in the middle could be sssd or winbind; however
> most of our linux boxes which are AD domain members don't provide SMB
> file sharing services.  I only want to have to debug one
> AD-authentication service (that's headache enough, believe me), so would
> it make sense to run winbind on machines that are only using Samba for
> administrative local use (i.e. no need to install full-blown Samba)?
> 
> I looked at the winbind rid service, and am worried this will map SIDs.
> The other features I'm looking for:
> 
>    - We don't have and can't get the POSIX subsystem in our AD deployment,
>      so I want the UID = SID; i.e not mapped in any way in order to
>      facilitate subsequent aggregation (say of storage) of what are
>      now independent labs.
> 
>    - Must support AD Security Groups because this is how we limit access
> to particular machines.
> 
>    - It would be nice to be able to use AD groups for authorization; then
> I wouldn't have to manage local groups in /etc/group (although ansible
> makes this less of a chore than it used to be).  Right now this doesn't
> seem to work with sssd; i.e. you can't chgrp files/folders to the AD
> groups listed using, say `id pgoetz` on the domain-bound linux machine.
> 
>    - It would be super awesome if nested groups were supported.  Right
> now sssd can't do this.
> 
> 
> 
>