Section 12.2. Dissection and Discussion


12.2. Dissection and Discussion

The key requirements in this business example are straightforward. You are not required to do anything new, just to replicate an existing system, not lose any existing features, and improve performance. The key points are:

  • Internet access for most employees

  • Distributed system to accommodate load and geographical distribution of users

  • Seamless and transparent interoperability with the existing Active Directory domain

12.2.1. Technical Issues

Functionally, the user's Internet Explorer requests a browsing session with the Squid proxy, for which it offers its AD authentication token. Squid hands off the authentication request to the Samba-3 authentication helper application called ntlm_auth. This helper is a hook into winbind, the Samba-3 NTLM authentication daemon. Winbind enables UNIX services to authenticate against Microsoft Windows domains, including Active Directory domains. As Active Directory authentication is a modified Kerberos authentication, winbind is assisted in this by local Kerberos 5 libraries configured to check passwords with the Active Directory server. Once the token has been checked, a browsing session is established. This process is entirely transparent and seamless to the user.

Enabling this consists of:

  • Preparing the necessary environment using preconfigured packages

  • Setting up raw Kerberos authentication against the Active Directory domain

  • Configuring, compiling, and then installing the supporting Samba-3 components

  • Tying it all together

12.2.2. Political Issues

You are a stranger in a strange land, and all eyes are upon you. Some would even like to see you fail. For you to gain the trust of your newly acquired IT people, it is essential that your solution does everything the old one did, but does it better in every way. Only then will the entrenched positions consider taking up your new way of doing things on a wider scale.



    Samba-3 by Example. Practical Exercises to Successful Deployment
    Samba-3 by Example: Practical Exercises to Successful Deployment (2nd Edition)
    ISBN: 013188221X
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2005
    Pages: 142

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