Using pGina to authenticate users on Windows PCs

To use LDAP to authenticate users on Windows PCs, you can use the pGina dynamically linked library. pGina is available from http://pgina.org.

Setup instructions are available in the document, Configuring pGina for LDAP Authentication For Windows XP.

In the section, Configure pGina, you can leave the Admin User and Admin Pass values blank if you don't need to authenticate UH students. This is because students are not publicly visible in LDAP and can't be found unless a special DN and password is used to connect to the directory server. Faculty and staff are publicly visible in LDAP so no Admin User and Pass are needed.

If you want to authenticate UH students, you will need to request a special DN.

Windows 7 users may need to add the IP address and hostname for the UH LDAP server, ldap1.its.hawaii.edu, to the Windows hosts file.

Campuses may want to limit PC usage to students, faculty, and staff at that campus. To do this, go to the pGina configuration screen and change the Filter from (uid=%s) to something like (&(uid=%s)(uhOrgAffiliation=eduPersonOrgDn=kcc,eduPersonAffiliation=*)) . In this example, the eduPersonOrgDn value is kcc for Kapiolani Community College.

Values for eduPersonOrgDn are:

• hawcc — Hawaii Community College
• hcc — Honolulu Community College
• kcc — Kapiolani Community College
• kauaicc — Kauai Community College
• lcc — Leeward Community College
• mauicc — Maui Community College
• wcc — Windward Community College
• uhh — University of Hawaii at Hilo
• uhm — University of Hawaii at Manoa
• uhwo — University of Hawaii – West Oahu
• rcuh — Research Corporation of UH

Questions and Answers

Question: posted to https://groups.google.com/group/pgina-general

If LDAP authentication is successful, does pGina 3.0 use the cleartext
password and rehashes the windows password with it so that, eventually, the
repository of hashed windows passwords is a subset of the LDAP passwords
(though hashed)? We've inferred this from our internal discussions that
are somewhat dated, but would like to understand this better.
Thanks for any info.

• mhodges

  Answer: provided by the developer

  pGina does not have a "repository of hashed windows passwords." Are you
  referring to the Windows local account store (SAM)?
  pGina works (in a typical LDAP-based configuration) by creating a local
  Windows account that has the same username and password as the LDAP
  account. That local account may be deleted after the user has logged out,
  if the Local Machine plugin is configured to do so. If it is not
  configured to do so, there may be a set of local accounts that is a subset
  of the LDAP accounts (those users who have logged on to the machine).
  Those accounts may or may not have the same password as the LDAP accounts
  depending on how the Local Machine plugin is configured (see the "Scramble
  password after logout" option).
  For more information, please take a look at the documentation for the Local
  Machine plugin, and the pGina user's guide. Let me know if there is
  something that could be more clear. http://pgina.org/docs/local_machine.html http://pgina.org/docs/user.html
  Thanks,
  David