Initial Release: August 22, 1996 Contributor: John H Terpstra Copyright (C) 1996-1997 - John H Terpstra Updated: August 25, 1997 Status: Current - New Content Subject: Windows NT Domain Control & Samba ============================================================================ ****NOTE:**** ============= The term "Domain Controller" and those related to it refer to one specific method of authentication that can underly an SMB domain. Domain Controllers prior to Windows NT Server 3.1 were sold by various companies and based on private extensions to the LAN Manager 2.1 protocol. Windows NT introduced Microsoft-specific ways of distributing the user authentication database. See DOMAIN.txt for examples of how Samba can participate in or create SMB domains based on shared authentication database schemes other than the Windows NT SAM. Microsoft Windows NT Domain Control is an extremely complex protocol. We have received countless requests to implement Domain Control in Samba and have seriously investigated the potential to support this. The Samba Team have now concluded that since Domain Control is a completely undocumented protocol we ought NOT to implement our best guess of this technology. It is a Microsoft business policy NOT to release the information necessary to enable this to be implemented in a dependable manner. ============================================================================ Windows NT Server can be installed as either a plain file and print server (WORKGROUP workstaion or server) or as a server that participates in Domain Control (DOMAIN member, Primary Domain controller or Backup Domain controller). The same is true for OS/2 Warp Server, Digital Pathworks and other similar products, all of which can participate in Domain Control along with Windows NT. However only those servers which have licenced Windows NT code in them can be a primary Domain Controller (eg Windows NT Server, Advanced Server for Unix.) To many people these terms can be confusing, so let's try to clear the air. Every Windows NT system (workstation or server) has a registry database. The registry contains entries that describe the initialisation information for all services (the equivalent of Unix Daemons) that run within the Windows NT environment. The registry also contains entries that tell application software where to find dynamically loadable libraries that they depend upon. In fact, the registry contains entries that describes everything that anything may need to know to interact with the rest of the system. The registry files can be located on any Windows NT machine by opening a command prompt and typing: dir %SystemRoot%\System32\config The environment variable %SystemRoot% value can be obtained by typing: echo %SystemRoot% The active parts of the registry that you may want to be familiar with are the files called: default, system, software, sam and security. In a domain environment, Microsoft Windows NT domain controllers participate in replication of the SAM and SECURITY files so that all controllers within the domain have an exactly identical copy of each. The Microsoft Windows NT system is structured within a security model that says that all applications and services must authenticate themselves before they can obtain permission from the security manager to do what they set out to do. The Windows NT User database also resides within the registry. This part of the registry contains the user's security identifier, home directory, group memberships, desktop profile, and so on. Every Windows NT system (workstation as well as server) will have its own registry. Windows NT Servers that participate in Domain Security control have a database that they share in common - thus they do NOT own an independent full registry database of their own, as do Workstations and plain Servers. The User database is called the SAM (Security Access Manager) database and is used for all user authentication as well as for authentication of inter- process authentication (ie: to ensure that the service action a user has requested is permitted within the limits of that user's privileges). The Samba team have produced a utility that can dump the Windows NT SAM into smbpasswd format: see ENCRYPTION.txt for information on smbpasswd and /pub/samba/pwdump on your nearest Samba mirror for the utility. This facility is useful but cannot be easily used to implement SAM replication to Samba systems. Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95, and Windows NT Workstations and Servers can participate in a Domain security system that is controlled by Windows NT servers that have been correctly configured. At most every domain will have ONE Primary Domain Controller (PDC). It is desirable that each domain will have at least one Backup Domain Controller (BDC). The PDC and BDCs then participate in replication of the SAM database so that each Domain Controlling participant will have an up to date SAM component within it's registry. Samba can NOT at this time function as a Domain Controller for any of these security services, but like all other domain members can interact with the Windows NT security system for all access authentication. When Samba is configured with the 'security = server' option and the 'password server = Your_Windows_NT_Server_Name' option, then it will redirect all access authentication to that server. This way you can use Windows NT to act as your password server with full support for Microsoft encrypted passwords.