Loggin to a Windows AD Domain
 

I have very little experience with Linux but I dared to install Suse Linux 10.1 to one of the machines at my office. My intention was to have it join the Windows domain of my network and then be able to login using the username and password I have on the domain. I suppose, I installed all the programs necessary to connect to the network following the installation instructions. The machine was able to join the domain and I was able to see all the boxes connected to the domain. What I cannot do is login to the domain using my domain user and pw.

Any suggestions?

You didn't mention which distro you are using. Most use PAM and may allow you to select Domain as the authentication source in the Users & Groups section.

In SuSE for example, You would go to YaST2 -> Users & Groups -> Authentication & User Data Sources (in advanced... dropdown). There are 4 choices in that section. NIS, LDAP, Kerberos, and Samba.

Login to AD
 

Of 4 choices, I configured LDA, Kerberos and Samba, and still I'm not able to authenticate on my Windows domain. Still looking for a solution.

You need to join the Linux machine to the domain/realm. I don't know if you are using AD or have an NT domain.

In SuSE's YaST2 -> Network Services, click on Windows Domain Membership. You may need to do this as a Windows Domain Administrator. I don't have a windows domain to try it out, but be prepared to enter both the username and password of the administrator. There are suboptions about whether you want a /home/ directory created when a Domain User logs in.

If you are using a different distro, then you will need to find a similar configuration program or manually configure PAM. You can also join the host to the domain from windows, but you also want to change how you log in on the Linux Machine.

I don't know what LDA stands for.

The Samba 3 books (possibly supplied by a samba-doc package) have information about AD and NT domains.

jschiwal:

Thanks for your help. Sorry about the typo. It's not LDA; its LDAP. As I said before, my linux box is able to join the AD (not NT) domain and I can browse the machines and shares available. What I cannot do is to login to the domain with my username and password (the one that I have on the domain). I read somewhere that Windows won't let a user to login with windows credentials in the domain using a linux box. Is that true?:confused:
Thanks again.

On my system, I can opt to have users authenticate using AD. I would go to YaST -> Users and Groups -> Authentication and User Data Sources. I would then select Samba and enter the name of the domain and check the "Also use smb for Linux Authentication". I didn't catch which distro you are using, but I'll bet it has a similar configuration setting. ( This dialog turned out to be the same that the Join Windows Domain led to.)

You might also read in the "Samba 3 Howto and Reference Guide". Maybe the troubleshooting information would help.
Also google for "AD Linux authentication redbook". The IBM Redbooks may have more information.

I read somewhere that installing the latest kerberos packages may be important.

This article may help:
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/art...Directory.html

jschiwal:

Thanks for the info. Instruction on windows networking website did the trick. Now I have another problem. I want to uninstall a program that runs at boot up, but I don't know if there exist a utility like the windows uninstall.
My Linux version is Novell Suse 10.1

You can uninstall packages using YaST2.

Login to Windows AD Domain
 

Done!
:D
Thanks