A few days ago, I +tried +to install a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze +while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and +noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the +university infrastructure. It was fairly easy, but it occured to me +that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to +connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure +itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure +around it. Now I am a huge step further along that road.
+ +With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming +workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the +university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory +servers for Kerberos authentication. All this without any +configuration at all during installation. My users home directory got +a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL. +In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured. In addition to +this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web +proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in +/etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf. Iceweasel and KDE is +configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use +a proxy when at the university network. If the machine is moved to a +network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP +gave it a IP address.
+ +The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS +entry ldap.$domain. If this do not exist, it look for the +_ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP +server. Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all +namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and +pick the first one as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar +algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the +uppercase version of $domain.
+ +So, what is not working, you might ask. SMB mounting my home +directory do not work. No idea why, but suspected the incorrect +Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be +the cause. These are not properly configured during installation, and +had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server, +but SMB mounting still do not work. :(
+ +With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu +roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and +connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM +authentication. It should also work out of the box in a Active +Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects +with UID and GID values.
+ +If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian +Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
+