Table of Contents
Overview
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.
Vista and Windows 7
- pGina 3.0 has been released as of April 2012 and is reported to be compatible with Windows 7.
- pGina 2.1, the July 2010 release is seems to no longer pass the LDAP admin credentials properly. As a result, it only works to authenticate fac/staff.
- pGina 2.0 does appear to work with Vista and Windows 7, but only after adding a line to the hosts file,
128.171.224.193 ldap1.its.hawaii.edu
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 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
pGina Online Community
The pGina community operates a Google Group with searchable archives and and active community that answers newly posted questions.
Questions and Answers
Question: Does pGina store passwords?
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.
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.
o http://pgina.org/docs/local_machine.html
o http://pgina.org/docs/user.html
Thanks,
David