This program is part of the samba(7) suite.
winbindd is a daemon that provides a number of services to the Name Service Switch capability found in most modern C libraries, to arbitrary applications via PAM and ntlm_auth and to Samba itself.
Even if winbind is not used for nsswitch, it still provides a service to smbd, ntlm_auth and the pam_winbind.so PAM module, by managing connections to domain controllers. In this configuration the m[blue]idmap config * : rangem[] parameter is not required. (This is known as `netlogon proxy only mode'.)
The Name Service Switch allows user and system information to be obtained from different databases services such as NIS or DNS. The exact behaviour can be configured through the /etc/nsswitch.conf file. Users and groups are allocated as they are resolved to a range of user and group ids specified by the administrator of the Samba system.
The service provided by winbindd is called `winbind' and can be used to resolve user and group information from a Windows NT server. The service can also provide authentication services via an associated PAM module.
The pam_winbind module supports the auth, account and password module-types. It should be noted that the account module simply performs a getpwnam() to verify that the system can obtain a uid for the user, as the domain controller has already performed access control. If the libnss_winbind library has been correctly installed, or an alternate source of names configured, this should always succeed.
The following nsswitch databases are implemented by the winbindd service:
hosts
passwd
group
For example, the following simple configuration in the /etc/nsswitch.conf file can be used to initially resolve user and group information from /etc/passwd and /etc/group and then from the Windows NT server.
passwd: files winbind group: files winbind ## only available on IRIX: use winbind to resolve hosts: # hosts: files dns winbind ## All other NSS enabled systems should use libnss_wins.so like this: hosts: files dns wins
The following simple configuration in the /etc/nsswitch.conf file can be used to initially resolve hostnames from /etc/hosts and then from the WINS server.
hosts: files wins
-D|--daemon
-F|--foreground
-S|--stdout
-d|--debuglevel=level
The higher this value, the more detail will be logged to the log files about the activities of the server. At level 0, only critical errors and serious warnings will be logged. Level 1 is a reasonable level for day-to-day running - it generates a small amount of information about operations carried out.
Levels above 1 will generate considerable amounts of log data, and should only be used when investigating a problem. Levels above 3 are designed for use only by developers and generate HUGE amounts of log data, most of which is extremely cryptic.
Note that specifying this parameter here will override the m[blue]log levelm[] parameter in the smb.conf file.
-V|--version
-s|--configfile=<configuration file>
-l|--log-basename=logdirectory
--option=<name>=<value>
-?|--help
--usage
-i|--interactive
-n|--no-caching
--no-process-group
Users and groups on a Windows NT server are assigned a security id (SID) which is globally unique when the user or group is created. To convert the Windows NT user or group into a unix user or group, a mapping between SIDs and unix user and group ids is required. This is one of the jobs that winbindd performs.
As winbindd users and groups are resolved from a server, user and group ids are allocated from a specified range. This is done on a first come, first served basis, although all existing users and groups will be mapped as soon as a client performs a user or group enumeration command. The allocated unix ids are stored in a database and will be remembered.
WARNING: The SID to unix id database is the only location where the user and group mappings are stored by winbindd. If this store is deleted or corrupted, there is no way for winbindd to determine which user and group ids correspond to Windows NT user and group rids.
Configuration of the winbindd daemon is done through configuration parameters in the smb.conf(5) file. All parameters should be specified in the [global] section of smb.conf.
To setup winbindd for user and group lookups plus authentication from a domain controller use something like the following setup. This was tested on an early Red Hat Linux box.
In /etc/nsswitch.conf put the following:
passwd: files winbind group: files winbind
In /etc/pam.d/* replace the auth lines with something like this:
auth required /lib/security/pam_securetty.so
auth required /lib/security/pam_nologin.so
auth sufficient /lib/security/pam_winbind.so
auth required /lib/security/pam_unix.so \
use_first_pass shadow nullok
The PAM module pam_unix has recently replaced the module pam_pwdb. Some Linux systems use the module pam_unix2 in place of pam_unix.
Note in particular the use of the sufficient keyword and the use_first_pass keyword.
Now replace the account lines with this:
account required /lib/security/pam_winbind.so
The next step is to join the domain. To do that use the net program like this:
net join -S PDC -U Administrator
The username after the -U can be any Domain user that has administrator privileges on the machine. Substitute the name or IP of your PDC for "PDC".
Next copy libnss_winbind.so to /lib and pam_winbind.so to /lib/security. A symbolic link needs to be made from /lib/libnss_winbind.so to /lib/libnss_winbind.so.2. If you are using an older version of glibc then the target of the link should be /lib/libnss_winbind.so.1.
Finally, setup a smb.conf(5) containing directives like the following:
[global]
winbind separator = +
winbind cache time = 10
template shell = /bin/bash
template homedir = /home/%D/%U
idmap config * : range = 10000-20000
workgroup = DOMAIN
security = domain
password server = *
Now start winbindd and you should find that your user and group database is expanded to include your NT users and groups, and that you can login to your unix box as a domain user, using the DOMAIN+user syntax for the username. You may wish to use the commands getent passwd and getent group to confirm the correct operation of winbindd.
The following notes are useful when configuring and running winbindd:
nmbd(8) must be running on the local machine for winbindd to work.
PAM is really easy to misconfigure. Make sure you know what you are doing when modifying PAM configuration files. It is possible to set up PAM such that you can no longer log into your system.
If more than one UNIX machine is running winbindd, then in general the user and groups ids allocated by winbindd will not be the same. The user and group ids will only be valid for the local machine, unless a shared m[blue]idmap config * : backendm[] is configured.
If the Windows NT SID to UNIX user and group id mapping file is damaged or destroyed then the mappings will be lost.
The following signals can be used to manipulate the winbindd daemon.
SIGHUP
Instead of sending a SIGHUP signal, a request to reload configuration file may be sent using smbcontrol(1) program.
SIGUSR2
Log files are stored in the filename specified by the log file parameter.
/etc/nsswitch.conf(5)
/tmp/.winbindd/pipe
$LOCKDIR/winbindd_privileged/pipe
/lib/libnss_winbind.so.X
$LOCKDIR/winbindd_idmap.tdb
$LOCKDIR/winbindd_cache.tdb
This man page is part of version 4.14.2 of the Samba suite.
nsswitch.conf(5), samba(7), wbinfo(1), ntlm_auth(8), smb.conf(5), pam_winbind(8)
The original Samba software and related utilities were created by Andrew Tridgell. Samba is now developed by the Samba Team as an Open Source project similar to the way the Linux kernel is developed.
wbinfo and winbindd were written by Tim Potter.
The conversion to DocBook for Samba 2.2 was done by Gerald Carter. The conversion to DocBook XML 4.2 for Samba 3.0 was done by Alexander Bokovoy.