ENVIRONMENT
-----------------------
The new server runs CentOS6, version 6.3, 64-bit, minimal install with
current updates applied.
Samba4 version 4.0.0beta5
BIND version 9.8.2
INSTALLATION
----------------------
I was disappointed to say the least when I discovered that the Samba4
package included with RHEL/CentOS is basically an empty shell. Even
though it's still at beta release, RH could have built it and put it in
the EPEL repo. Or even the folks at CentOS could have added it to their
centosplus or extras repo.
Although I am capable, the thought of building Samba4 from source did
not excite me. And it's a maintenance nightmare for upgrades. With
some searching I found that the nice people at SOGo have built Samba4
for several distributions, including RPMs for RHEL/CentOS. I believe
it's required for their OpenChange groupware product. The Samba4 RPM is
now in their main repo and can be easily installed via yum. See their
website (www.sogo.nu) for instructions.
# yum install samba4
This required only one dependency on my system - perl-Parse-Yapp.
I therefore commenced the Samba4 HowTo at step 4 (provisioning).
EXAMPLE
---------------
For this example I will assume a domain name of DEMO, AD domain
demo.local, server IP 192.168.0.1.
DNS
------
Setup /etc/resolv.conf to work correctly:
domain demo.local
nameserver 192.168.0.1
or
search demo.local demo.com
nameserver 192.168.0.1
if using multiple domains.
Because of the AD interaction with DNS it is important to have BIND
installed and working before attempting Samba4. But do NOT create a zone
file for the demo.local AD domain. This will be done by the Samba4 DLZ
backend. I initially setup zone files for demo.com, demo.local and a
reverse zone. The demo.local zone file clashed with Samba4 so I removed
it.
PROVISIONING
-----------------------
To provision Samba4:
# provision --realm=demo.local --domain=DEMO --adminpass=secret
--server-role=dc --host-ip=192.168.0.1
I have IP aliases setup for virtual hosting so I specify here which
address I want to use (just in case). Provision worked OK.
The following lines were added to /etc/named.conf as per the
instructions:
tkey-gssapi-keytab "/var/lib/samba4/private/dns.keytab"
include "/var/lib/samba4/private/named.conf"
The kerberos file was copies to /etc:
# cp /var/lib/samba4/private/krb5.conf /etc/
replacing the default (cp will keep the correct SELinux file context)
BEFORE STARTUP
-----------------------------
Before starting Samba4 you should be aware that you will have multiple
problems with iptables and SELinux, so turn them off for now. More on
this later. Stop iptables and set SELinux to permissive mode.
# service iptables stop
# setenforce 0
STARTING SAMBA
----------------------------
The first problem I found when trying to start Samba4 was the init
script - it doesn't work. The script tries to start smbd, but somewhere
in the development the name was changed to samba, but script was never
updated. There were other aspects of the script I didn't like either so
I rewrote the init script as follows:
---***---
#! /bin/bash
#
# samba4 This shell script takes care of starting and stopping
# the Samba4 server
#
# chkconfig: - 91 35
# description: Samba provides file and print services to SMB/CIFS
clients. \
# Version 4 adds an Active Directory domain controller.
# config: /etc/samba4/smb.conf
# config: /etc/sysconfig/samba4
# pidfile: /var/rum/samba4/samba.pid
#
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:
# Should-Start:
# Short-Description: Start and stop the Samba4 server
# Description: Samba provides file and print services to SMB/CIFS
clients.
# Version 4 adds an Active Directory domain controller.
### END INIT INFO
# Source function library.
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions
if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/samba4 ]; then
. /etc/sysconfig/samba4
fi
# Avoid using root's TMPDIR
unset TMPDIR
prog=samba4
samba=/usr/sbin/samba
pidfile=/var/run/samba4/samba.pid
smbdpidfile=/var/run/samba4/smbd.pid
# Check that smb.conf exists.
[ -f /etc/samba4/smb.conf ] || exit 6
RETVAL=0
start() {
echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
daemon --pidfile=$pidfile $samba $SMBDOPTIONS
RETVAL=$?
echo
return $RETVAL
}
stop() {
echo -n $"Shutting down $prog: "
killproc -p $pidfile $samba
RETVAL=$?
echo
[ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && rm -f $pidfile && rm -f $smbdpidfile
return $RETVAL
}
# See how we were called.
case "$1" in
start)
start
;;
stop)
stop
;;
status)
status -p $pidfile $samba
RETVAL=$?
;;
restart|reload)
stop
sleep 1
start
;;
*)
echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|status}"
exit 1
esac
exit $RETVAL
---***---
The next problem was the permissions on the /var/lib/samba4/private
directory. This is created as owner root:root mode 0700, as you would
expect with Samba3. However, Samba4 puts AD domain files under here,
but BIND cannot access them because of the permissions. Changing the
owner to root:named mode 0750 fixes this issue.
# chgrp named /var/lib/samba4/private
# chmod g+rx /var/lib/samba4/private
Restart BIND and start Samba4:
# service named restart
# service samba4 start
Both should startup successfully.
TESTING
-------------
I tested my Samba4 server using a Windows 7 VM. I was able to join the
demo.local domain, then login as DEMO\Administrator. Success!
I installed the RSAT tools for Windows 7 and enabled the AD DS snap-in
tools, Group Policy tools and DNS server tools. This provides just
about everything needed to manage the AD domain - Users and Computers,
Group Policy Manager, DNS Manager - all done from a Windows client using
the native Windows tools. Very cool!
I created a dummy user account and a couple of GPOs for roaming profiles
and folder redirection, and tested those with the user account. It is
important to mention here that, after creating shares for the user
profiles and home directories and defining them in smb.conf, browse
those top-level shares in Windows as Administrator and add to the
security properties the group Domain Users with read/write access.
Otherwise the user will not be able to write to them.
Note: I created the user home directory share as /home/DEMO to segregate
from unix users.
IPv6
------
Despite setting IPv6 to NO in the network script, netstat will still
show everything listening on IPv6 addresses. Honestly, why can't RH
provide one simple setting to turn IPv6 off globally? To disable this
nuisance for Samba add this to smb.conf and restart Samba4.
interfaces = 127.0.0.1 192.168.0.1
bind interfaces only = yes
AD DNS
------------
When using the DNS Manager to add new entries to the demo.local domain I
noticed something peculiar. The SOA record, created by the provision
step, had the default TTL=0. Therefore, any records created will
inherit this. According to MS AD documentation this should be 3600.
Attempts to change this from DNS Manager failed. Is this a bug? I then
attempted to change it using samba-tool, but this seems to be rather
broken, as it just spat out errors. And the help is far from helpful.
I eventually found that I can use nsupdate (part of BIND), but requests
to update the AD domain must be authenticated by kerberos (using kinit).
To do this, install the krb5-workstation package.
# yum install krb5-workstation
# kinit Administrator
Password for Administrator@DEMO.LOCAL: secret
Update the existing records by adding them again with new values.
# nsupdate -g
> update add demo.local 3600 SOA server.demo.local hostmaster.demo.local 900 600 86400 3600
> update add demo.local 3600 NS server.demo.local
> update add demo.local 3600 A 192.168.0.1
> update add server.demo.local 3600 A 192.168.0.1
> send
Note that I successfully used the DNS Manager to add other A, CNAME and
MX records to demo.local.
NTP
------
I decided to build a local RPM with updated NTP to support signed ntp
required for AD clients. I created the build user and environment
(plenty of info available on how to do this) and installed rpm-build,
gcc and make, with any dependencies.
# yum install rpm-build gcc make
I downloaded the ntp-4.2.4p8 SRPM from CentOS and ntp-4.2.6p5 tarball
from ntp.org, installed the SRPM and put the new tarball under SOURCES.
The only edits I made to the ntp.spec file were:
- Update version/release numbers
- Comment out all patch lines
- Add --enable-ntp-signd after --enable-linuxcaps
- Add %{_sbindir}/sntp after %{_ntptime}
The HowTo had some other edits related to man8 but I ignored those
because they didn't seem right to me.
Run the build (not as root!):
$ rpmbuild -ba ntp.spec
This initially produced some errors, as expected, for required
dependencies. I installed those packages, but removed them later to
keep the system clean (yum history undo is great for this). The build
ran successfully, producing RPMs for ntp and ntpdate to install,
upgrading the existing 4.2.4 versions.
# yum install ./ntp-4.2.6* ./ntpdate-4.2.6*
I then edited the /etc/ntp.conf file as follows and restarted ntpd:
restrict 192.168.0.0 mask 255.255.255.0 mssntp
ntpsigndsocket /var/run/samba4/ntp_signd/
The Windows 7 client should now sync its clock to the DC. From Windows
7 run:
C:> w32tm /resync /rediscover
This should report successful completion. If not check:
C:> w32tm /query /configuration
The time provider should be type NT5DS. If not try:
C:> w32tm /config /syncfromflags:domhier /update
C:> net stop w32time && net start w32time
When it's working the command
C:> w32tm /monitor
will report on the time source of the DC.
Initially my Windows 7 VM would not sync. I believe the problem was,
before joining the domain, the VM had 192.168.0.1 set as an additional
time source. After joining a domain this option is no longer visible,
but the setting is still trapped somewhere. Searching the registry did
not help. In the end I removed the VM from the domain, which made the
additional time source option visible again, deleted the setting that
was still there, then join the domain again. After that it worked.
I will also mention that I read comments saying that the ownership and
mode of the ntp_signd directory had to be changed to give ntpd write
access. I tried this and I disagree. In fact, if you play with the
permissions Samba4 will refuse to create the socket. The error is
clearly shown in the /var/log/samba4/samba.log file. Samba4 creates the
ntp_signd directory as root:root 0755 and this works.
AVAHI
----------
I read in a couple of places that Avahi can be used as a replacement for
nmbd, which is currently missing in Samba4. I installed avahi:
# yum install avahi
A couple of dependencies were required. I created the file
/etc/avahi/services/samba.service as per examples with port 139 and
started the service. But my Windows 7 VM will not see the server when
browsing the network. If I run avahi-browse from the server it reports
the MS Windows network demo.local with server.demo.local at 192.168.0.1
as might be expected. I am not sure why this does not work. Maybe
someone has the answer to this.
IPTABLES
---------------
With the Samba4 server and Windows 7 client running it's time to try
enabling the security features again. I read a number websites listing
port requirements for AD/Samba4 and not one them was complete and
correct. This list is produced from netstat and by using Wireshark to
monitor the traffic. To use netstat run:
# netstat -lntup | grep -e samba -e smbd
The ports needed are:
53, TCP & UDP (DNS)
88, TCP & UDP (Kerberos authentication)
135, TCP (MS RPC)
137, UDP (NetBIOS name service)
138, UDP (NetBIOS datagram service)
139, TCP (NetBIOS session service)
389, TCP & UDP (LDAP)
445, TCP (MS-DS AD)
464, TCP & UDP (Kerberos change/set password)
1024, TCP (this is a strange one but AD is using it)
Add these to iptables:
# iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 53 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -p udp --dport 53 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -p udp --dport 137:138 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 139 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 445 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 135 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 88 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -p udp --dport 88 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 464 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 389 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -p udp --dport 389 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 1024 -j ACCEPT
Start the service and save the changes
# service iptables save
# service iptables start
SELINUX
-------------
Although I am experienced with unix/linux I had not used SELinux before
setting up this server. I knew that it's a pain, but I wanted to
persevere with it, so I did a lot of reading to learn how to use it.
However, in my opinion, the people who manage SELinux really need to do
something to improve its useability and administration because,
honestly, it's awful. It's little wonder that many administrators just
turn it off. And making GUI tools is not the answer. Administrators
will not (and should not) install a desktop like Gnome on a server, so
the GUI tools are unavailable.
The problem with Samba4 and SELinux is that SELinux has no pre-defined
policy at this time for Samba4. So I started out to make one. With
SELinux in permissive mode it's allowing Samba4 to run but recording all
the things it doesn't like in the audit.log file. To examine this log I
installed the policycoreutils-python tools package and its dependencies:
# yum install policycoreutils-python
To get a list of events run
# aureport -a
and for more detailed messages
# ausearch -m avc
Piping the messages through audit2allow generates a list of rules that
would allow the actions. The initial results seemed a bit overwhelming.
To produce something more reasonable I decided to utilise the file
contexts defined in the Samba3 policy as a basis and apply them to the
Samba4 installation. To list these contexts:
# semanage fcontext -l | grep -e samba -e smbd
I modified these to suit the Samba4 installation and defined a set of
rules to relabel the Samba4 directories acordingly. These are applied
as follows:
# semanage fcontext -a -t samba_initrc_exec_t
"/etc/rc\.d/init\.d/samba4"
# semanage fcontext -a -t samba_etc_t "/etc/samba4(/.*)?"
# semanage fcontext -a -t samba_var_t "/var/lib/samba4(/.*)?"
# semanage fcontext -a -t named_var_run_t
"/var/lib/samba4/private/dns(/.*)?"
# semanage fcontext -a -t named_conf_t
"/var/lib/samba4/private/named.conf.*"
# semanage fcontext -a -t named_conf_t
"/var/lib/samba4/private/dns.keytab"
# semanage fcontext -a -t samba_unconfined_script_exec_t
"/var/lib/samba4/sysvol/[^/]*/scripts(/.*)?"
# semanage fcontext -a -t winbind_var_run_t
"/var/lib/samba4/winbindd_privileged(/.*)?"
# semanage fcontext -a -t samba_log_t "/var/log/samba4(/.*)?"
# semanage fcontext -a -t smbd_var_run_t "/var/lock/samba4(/.*)?"
# semanage fcontext -a -t smbd_var_run_t "/var/run/samba4(/.*)?"
# semanage fcontext -a -t ntpd_var_run_t
"/var/run/samba4/ntp_signd(/.*)?"
# semanage fcontext -a -t winbind_var_run_t
"/var/run/samba4/winbindd(/.*)?"
# semanage fcontext -a -t winbind_var_run_t
"/var/run/samba4/winbindd_privileged(/.*)?"
Then apply the new contexts:
# restorecon -v /etc/rc.d/init.d/samba4
# restorecon -R -v /etc/samba4
# restorecon -R -v /var/lib/samba4
# restorecon -R -v /var/log/samba4
# restorecon -R -v /var/lock/samba4
# restorecon -R -v /var/run/samba4
Locally defined file contexts are stored in
/etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts.local but this file
cannot be edited by hand. Be aware that the order these are entered IS
important. With pre-defined policies SELinux will apply the rules in a
logical order with more specific rules taking preference over less
specific ones. This is not the case with locally created rules. They
are applied sequentially as they are entered, so if the order is wrong
you get the wrong result. That means having to delete some or all of
the rules and enter them again in the correct order. I actually created
a script to do this tedious task.
With the new file contexts in place I allowed SELinux to gather log data
for a while, then used audit2allow to produce a file for generating a
policy module
# ausearch -m avc -ts dd/mm/yy | audit2allow -m samba4local >
samba4local.te
I edited the samba4local.te file to remove the unwanted commentary. The
result looked like this:
---***---
module samba4local 1.0;
require {
type initrc_t;
type named_t;
type named_var_run_t;
type ntpd_t;
type ntpd_var_run_t;
type smbd_t;
type samba_unconfined_script_exec_t;
type urandom_device_t;
type var_lock_t;
class unix_stream_socket connectto;
class unix_dgram_socket sendto;
class sock_file write;
class chr_file write;
class file { read write getattr open lock };
class dir { read search };
}
#============= named_t ==============
allow named_t urandom_device_t:chr_file write;
#============= ntpd_t ==============
allow ntpd_t initrc_t:unix_stream_socket connectto;
allow ntpd_t ntpd_var_run_t:sock_file write;
#============= smbd_t ==============
allow smbd_t initrc_t:unix_dgram_socket sendto;
allow smbd_t initrc_t:unix_stream_socket connectto;
allow smbd_t named_var_run_t:file { read write getattr open lock };
allow smbd_t samba_unconfined_script_exec_t:dir read;
allow smbd_t urandom_device_t:chr_file write;
allow smbd_t var_lock_t:dir search;
---***---
Compile the module and create the policy package:
# checkmodule -M -m -o samba4local.mod samba4local.te
# semodule_package -o samba4local.pp -m samba4local.mod
Load the module:
# semodule -i samba4local.pp
With this policy in place SELinux should be able to run in enforcing
mode without affecting Samba.
I also enabled the following SELinux booleans:
# setsebool -P samba_domain_controller on
# setsebool -P samba_enable_home_dirs on
