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PAM and NSSwitch are necessary for LDAP-authentication/authorization of users on our GNU/Linux servers (and possibly also our GNU/Linux workstations). Furthermore you could configure several applications such as the Cyrus IMAPd, Openvpn, ProFTPd, Jabberd2 etc. to use PAM/NSSwitch for user authentication/authorization against LDAP. In this case you won't need to add special LDAP-patches to your services. Just configure them to use PAM/NSSwitch.

=====PAM/NSSwitch=====
Tested on Debian-4.0, Debian-3.1 and Ubuntu-Jeos-7.10.

====Installation====
Install the necessary software
  apt-get install libnss-ldap libpam-ldap


====Configuration====
Add ldap to /etc/nsswitch.conf
  passwd:      compat ldap
  group:       compat ldap
  shadow:      compat
  hosts:       files dns
  networks:    files
  protocols:   db files
  services:    db files
  ethers:      db files
  rpc:         db files
  netgroup:    nis

Edit /etc/libnss-ldap.conf
  host ldap.intra.example.com
  base dc=intra,dc=example,dc=com
  ldap_version 3
  timelimit 30
  bind_timelimit 30
  pam_filter objectclass=posixAccount
  pam_password md5
  bind_policy soft
  ssl start_tls

Edit /etc/pam_ldap.conf
  host ldap.intra.example.com
  base dc=intra,dc=example,dc=com
  ldap_version 3
  timelimit 30
  bind_timelimit 30
  pam_filter objectclass=posixAccount
  pam_password md5
  bind_policy soft
  ssl start_tls

Edit /etc/pam.d/common-account
  account sufficient       pam_ldap.so
  account required         pam_unix.so try_first_pass

Edit /etc/pam.d/common-auth
  auth sufficient       pam_ldap.so
  auth required         pam_unix.so try_first_pass

Edit /etc/pam.d/common-password
  password sufficient       pam_ldap.so md5
  password required         pam_unix.so md5 try_first_pass

Edit /etc/pam.d/common-session
  session sufficient       pam_ldap.so
  session required         pam_unix.so

Edit /etc/ldap/ldap.conf
  URI     ldap://ldap.intra.example.com
  BASE dc=intra,dc=example,dc=com
  HOST ldap.intra.example.com
  TLS_CACERTDIR /etc/ldap/cacerts/
  TLS_REQCERT allow
  #TLS_REQCERT allow  # for a Ubuntu-desktop?

Create the directory for the public certificates of Certificate Authorities
  mkdir /etc/ldap/cacerts

Now we have to convert the public CA-certificate of the Fedora Directory Server (which was created by the setupssl.sh script, see [[hannibal:ldap_directory#ssl_tls_configuration|our FDS documentation]] for more information on this procedure) for usage with libnss/pam.
The script puts the cacert.asc file in the directory  /opt/fedora-ds/alias . Copy it to your client (the server or virtual server you're working on right now is a LDAP-client) and run (you might need to install the openssl package first if that isn't already available on your system):
  apt-get install openssl
  cp cacert.asc /etc/ldap/cacerts/`openssl x509 -noout -hash -in cacert.asc`.0

At this moment PAM and NSS should be able to connect to your corporate LDAP-server.
This example should list your local Unix-users and also your LDAP-users with a properly configured POSIX-account.

  getent passwd

===Pam_ldap per service===
One very handy feature of the pam_ldap.so module is the possibility to create a configuration per individual service. This is done by pointing the module to a specific configuration file. For instance we want to add a customized pam filter for services like 'ssh' and 'login' that we don't want to use for other services. Of course this is just an example. It's not limited to 'pam account'!
  ...
  account sufficient       pam_ldap.so config=/etc/pam_ldap.conf-access
  ...

Example filter we use for 'ssh' and 'login' (line in /etc/pam_ldap.conf-access). We use the trust-schema in LDAP to limit access to our hosts:
  ...
  pam_filter objectclass=posixAccount)(|(trustmodel=fullaccess)(accessto=xendns)
  ...

====Ubuntu Dapper issue====
There seemed to be a problem with libnss-ldap on Ubuntu Dapper. We just can't get it to work properly. As a workaround we keep the TLS configuration in PAM (i.c the file /etc/pam_ldap.conf) and we comment the start_tls line in libnss-ldap (i.c. the file /etc/libnss-ldap.conf). This results in a somewhat less ideal situation, however passwords still go encrypted over the network.

Only on Ubuntu Dapper(!) edit /etc/libnss-ldap.conf
  ...
  # ssl start_tls
  ...  

====Ubuntu Desktop additions====

To prevent the startup of the X desktop during boot, add in /etc/ldap.conf:
  bind_policy soft

See also: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LDAPClientAuthentication for Ubuntu 7.10 and newer.
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