LDAP Authentication for Linux

LDAP Authentication for Linux

2002 by metaconsultancy
LDAP is a directory server technology that allows information such as usernames and
passwords for an entire site to be stored on a central server. This whitepapers describes
how to set up a Linux workstation to use an LDAP server for user information and
authentication.
Before proceeding, you will need a working LDAP server which can provide you with user
information. If you need to set one up, consult our OpenLDAP whitepaper for instructions.
User information consists of such data as mappings between user id numbers and user
names (used, for example, by ls -l), or home directory locations (used, for example, by
cd ~). Lookups of such information are handled by the name service subsystem,
configured in the file /etc/nsswitch.conf. Authentication (password checking), on the
other hand, is handled by the PAM (plugable authentication module) subsystem,
configured in the /etc/pam.d/ directory. While these two subsystems can (in fact must)
be configured seperately, you will likely want both to use LDAP.
nss-ldap
Begin by installing the shared library code necessary for the name service to use ldap.
# apt-get install libnss-ldap
Next, open the /etc/nsswitch.conf file, and tell the name service subsystem to use
LDAP to obtain user information.
nsswitch.conf
passwd: files ldap
group: files ldap
shadow: files ldap
Note that we do not eliminate the use of flat files, since some users and groups (e.g. root)
will remain local. If your machines do not use flat files at all and your LDAP server goes
down, not even root will be able to log in.
Finally, you need to tell then name service subsystem how to talk to your LDAP server.
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This is done in the file /etc/libnss-ldap.conf.
libnss-ldap.conf
uri ldap://ldap.example.com/ ldap://ldap-backup.example.com/
base dc=example, dc=org
The uri directive specifies the domain name (or IP address) of your LDAP server. As our
example illustrates, you can specify multiple LDAP servers, in which case they will be
employed in failover fashion. The base directive specifies the root DN at which searches
should start. For additional information on these and other configuration directives, man
libnss-ldap.conf.
nss-ldap expects accounts to be objects with the following attributes: uid, uidNumber,
gidNumber, homeDirectory, and loginShell. These attributes are allowed by the
objectClass posixAccount.
There is a simple way to verify that your name service subsystem is using your LDAP
server as instructed. Assign a file to be owned by a user that exists only in the LDAP
database, not in /etc/passwd. If an ls -l correctly shows the username, then the
name service subsystem is consulting the LDAP database; if it just shows the user
number, something is wrong. For example, if the user john, with user number 1001, exists
only in LDAP, we can try
# touch /tmp/test
# chown 1001 /tmp/test
# ls -l /tmp/test
-rw-r----- 1 john users 0 Jan 1 12:00 test
to determine whether the the name service is using LDAP.
pam-ldap
Next we configure the PAM subsystem to use LDAP for passwords. Begin by installing
the necessary PAM module.
# apt-get install libpam-ldap
The configuration file for the pam_ldap.so module is /etc/pam_ldap.conf.
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pam_ldap.conf
uri ldaps://ldap.example.com/
base dc=example,dc=com
pam_password exop
The uri and base directives work the same way they do for /etc/libnss_ldap.conf
and /etc/ldap/ldap.conf. Notice that we have used ldaps to ensure that
connections over which passwords are exchanged are encrypted. The directive
"pam_password exop" tells pam-ldap to change passwords in a way that allows
OpenLDAP to apply the hashing algorithm specified in /etc/ldap/slapd.conf,
instead of attempting to hash locally and write the result directly into the database.
pam-ldap assumes accounts to be ojbects with the following attributes: uid and
userPassword. The attributes are allowed by the objectClass posixAccount.
We are now ready to configure individual services to use the LDAP server for password
checking. Each service that uses PAM for authentication has its own configuration file /
etc/pam.d/service. To configure a service to use LDAP for password-checking, you
must modify its PAM configuration file.
To avoid an in-depth explanation of PAM, we will content ourselves with a few examples.
Consider first the login program, which handles logins from the text console. A typical
PAM stack which checks passwords both in /etc/passwd and in the LDAP database
follows.
/etc/pam.d/login
auth required pam_nologin.so
auth sufficient pam_ldap.so
auth sufficient pam_unix.so shadow use_first_pass
auth required pam_deny.so
After successful password authentication using the auth stack, login checks for the
existance of an account using the account stack, so it is necessary to reference pam-ldap
there, too.
/etc/pam.d/login
account sufficient pam_unix.so
account sufficient pam_ldap.so
account required pam_deny.so
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Other login-like programs include xdm and gdm (for graphical logins), ssh (for remote
logins), su (for switching programs), and xlock and xscreensaver (for locked screens).
Each has its own file in /etc/pam.d/.
Some applications not only authenticate passwords, but can also be used to change
them. The prototypical example is of course passwd, the standard password-changing
utility. Such programs can be configured to use LDAP by modifying their password stack.
/etc/pam.d/passwd
password required pam_cracklib.so
password sufficient pam_ldap.so
password sufficient pam_unix.so
password required pam_deny.so
One convienient application of pam-ldap is to set up "black box" servers that can
authenticate users for a particular service without having an account on the machine at
all. Services such as netatalk, (Cyrus) imap, and (Postfix) smtp use PAM. By configuring
their PAM stacks to use LDAP, while leaving LDAP out of the PAM stacks of services
such as login and ssh, you can easily create a "black box" server.
nscd
To keep your computers from pounding your LDAP server every time a command such
as ls -l /home is issued on a computer in your organization, it is a good idea to
configure your workstations to cache some user data. As long as the data in the cache is
sufficiently fresh, the workstations use in instead of asking your LDAP server again. The
name server caching daemon (nscd) accomplishes exactly this task.
To install nscd on Debian, just
# apt-get install nscd
The configuration file for nscd is /etc/nscd.conf.
nscd.conf
enable-cache passwd yes
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positive-time-to-live passwd 600
negative-time-to-live passwd 20
suggested-size passwd 211
check-files passwd yes
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