nslcd.conf(5) System Manager's Manual nslcd.conf(5) NAME nslcd.conf - configuration file for LDAP nameservice daemon DESCRIPTION The nss-pam-ldapd package allows LDAP directory servers to be used as a primary source of name service information. (Name service information typi- cally includes users, hosts, groups, and other such data historically stored in flat files or NIS.) The file nslcd.conf contains the configuration information for running nslcd (see nslcd(8)). The file contains options, one on each line, defin- ing the way NSS lookups and PAM actions are mapped to LDAP lookups. OPTIONS RUNTIME OPTIONS threads NUM Specifies the number of threads to start that can handle requests and perform LDAP queries. Each thread opens a separate connection to the LDAP server. The default is to start 5 threads. uid UID This specifies the user id with which the daemon should be run. This can be a numerical id or a symbolic value. If no uid is speci- fied no attempt to change the user will be made. Note that you should use values that don't need LDAP to resolve. gid GID This specifies the group id with which the daemon should be run. This can be a numerical id or a symbolic value. If no gid is speci- fied no attempt to change the group will be made. Note that you should use values that don't need LDAP to resolve. log SCHEME [LEVEL] This option controls the way logging is done. The SCHEME argument may either be none, syslog or an absolute file name. The LEVEL ar- gument is optional and specifies the log level. The log level may be one of: crit, error, warning, notice, info or debug. The default log level is info. All messages with the specified loglevel or higher are logged. This option can be supplied multiple times. If this option is omitted syslog info is assumed. GENERAL CONNECTION OPTIONS uri URI ... Specifies the LDAP URI of the server to connect to. The URI scheme may be ldap, ldapi or ldaps, specifying LDAP over TCP, ICP or SSL respectively (if supported by the LDAP library). Alternatively, the value DNS may be used to try to lookup the server using DNS SRV records. By default the current domain is used but another domain can be queried by using the DNS:DOMAIN syntax. To convert SRV records for port 389 into an ldaps:// URI, DNSLDAPS can be used. When using the ldapi scheme, %2f should be used to escape slashes (e.g. ldapi://%2fvar%2frun%2fslapd%2fldapi/), although most of the time this should not be needed. This option may be specified multiple times and/or with more URIs on the line, separated by spaces. Normally, only the first server will be used with the following servers as fall-back (see bind_timelimit below). If LDAP lookups are used for host name resolution, any host names should be specified as an IP address or name that can be resolved without using LDAP. ldap_version VERSION Specifies the version of the LDAP protocol to use. The default is to use the maximum version supported by the LDAP library. binddn DN Specifies the distinguished name with which to bind to the directory server for lookups. The default is to bind anonymously. bindpw PASSWORD Specifies the credentials with which to bind. This option is only applicable when used with binddn above. If you set this option you should consider changing the permissions of the nslcd.conf file to only grant access to the root user. rootpwmoddn DN Specifies the distinguished name to use when the root user tries to modify a user's password using the PAM module. Note that currently this DN needs to exist as a real entry in the LDAP directory. rootpwmodpw PASSWORD Specifies the credentials with which to bind if the root user tries to change a user's password. This option is only applicable when used with rootpwmoddn above. If this option is not specified the PAM module prompts the user for this password. If you set this op- tion you should consider changing the permissions of the nslcd.conf file to only grant access to the root user. SASL AUTHENTICATION OPTIONS sasl_mech MECHANISM Specifies the SASL mechanism to be used when performing SASL authen- tication. sasl_realm REALM Specifies the SASL realm to be used when performing SASL authentica- tion. sasl_authcid AUTHCID Specifies the authentication identity to be used when performing SASL authentication. sasl_authzid AUTHZID Specifies the authorization identity to be used when performing SASL authentication. Must be specified in one of the formats: dn:<dis- tinguished name> or u:<username>. sasl_secprops PROPERTIES Specifies Cyrus SASL security properties. Allowed values are de- scribed in the ldap.conf(5) manual page. sasl_canonicalize yes|no Determines whether the LDAP server host name should be canoni- calised. If this is set to yes the LDAP library will do a reverse host name lookup. By default, it is left up to the LDAP library whether this check is performed or not. KERBEROS AUTHENTICATION OPTIONS krb5_ccname NAME Set the name for the GSS-API Kerberos credentials cache. SEARCH/MAPPING OPTIONS base [MAP] DN Specifies the distinguished name (DN) to use as search base. This option may be supplied multiple times and all specified bases will be searched. A global search base may be specified or a MAP-specific one. If no MAP-specific search bases are defined the global ones are used. If, instead of a DN, the value DOMAIN is specified, the host's DNS domain is used to construct a search base. A value of "" can be used to indicate an empty search base (quotes are not otherwise sup- ported for base values and not all LDAP server configurations sup- port this). If this value is not defined an attempt is made to look it up in the configured LDAP server. If the LDAP server is unavailable during start-up nslcd will not start. scope [MAP] sub[tree]|one[level]|base|children Specifies the search scope (subtree, onelevel, base or children). The default scope is subtree; base scope is almost never useful for name service lookups; children scope is not supported on all servers. deref never|searching|finding|always Specifies the policy for dereferencing aliases. The default policy is to never dereference aliases. referrals yes|no Specifies whether automatic referral chasing should be enabled. The default behaviour is to chase referrals. filter MAP FILTER The FILTER is an LDAP search filter to use for a specific map. The default filter is a basic search on the objectClass for the map (e.g. (objectClass=posixAccount)). map MAP ATTRIBUTE NEWATTRIBUTE This option allows for custom attributes to be looked up instead of the default RFC 2307 attributes. The MAP may be one of the sup- ported maps below. The ATTRIBUTE is the one as used in RFC 2307 (e.g. userPassword, ipProtocolNumber, macAddress, etc.). The NEWATTRIBUTE may be the name of any attribute as it is available in the directory. If the NEWATTRIBUTE is quoted (") as "EXPRESSION" it is treated as an expression which will be evaluated to build up the actual value used. See the section on attribute mapping expressions below for more details. Only some attributes for group, passwd and shadow entries may be mapped with an expression (because other attributes may be used in search filters). For group entries only the userPassword attribute may be mapped with an expression. For passwd entries the following attributes may be mapped with an expression: userPassword, gidNum- ber, gecos, homeDirectory and loginShell. For shadow entries the following attributes may be mapped with an expression: userPassword, shadowLastChange, shadowMin, shadowMax, shadowWarning, shadowInac- tive, shadowExpire and shadowFlag. The uidNumber and gidNumber attributes in the passwd and group maps may be mapped to the objectSid followed by the domain SID to derive numeric user and group ids from the SID (e.g. object- Sid:S-1-5-21-3623811015-3361044348-30300820). By default all userPassword attributes are mapped to the unmatchable password ("*") to avoid accidentally leaking password information. TIMING/RECONNECT OPTIONS bind_timelimit SECONDS Specifies the time limit (in seconds) to use when connecting to the directory server. This is distinct from the time limit specified in timelimit and affects the set-up of the connection only. Note that not all LDAP client libraries have support for setting the connec- tion time out. The default bind_timelimit is 10 seconds. timelimit SECONDS Specifies the time limit (in seconds) to wait for a response from the LDAP server. A value of zero (0), which is the default, is to wait indefinitely for searches to be completed. idle_timelimit SECONDS Specifies the period of inactivity (in seconds) after which the con- nection to the LDAP server will be closed. The default is not to time out connections. reconnect_sleeptime SECONDS Specifies the number of seconds to sleep when connecting to all LDAP servers fails. By default 1 second is waited between the first failure and the first retry. reconnect_retrytime SECONDS Specifies the time after which the LDAP server is considered to be permanently unavailable. Once this time is reached retries will be done only once per this time period. The default value is 10 sec- onds. Note that the reconnect logic as described above is the mechanism that is used between nslcd and the LDAP server. The mechanism between the NSS and PAM client libraries on one end and nslcd on the other is simpler with a fixed compiled-in time out of a 10 seconds for writing to nslcd and a time out of 60 seconds for reading answers. nslcd itself has a read time out of 0.5 seconds and a write time out of 60 seconds. SSL/TLS OPTIONS ssl on|off|start_tls Specifies whether to use SSL/TLS or not (the default is not to). If start_tls is specified then StartTLS is used rather than raw LDAP over SSL. Not all LDAP client libraries support both SSL, StartTLS and all related configuration options. tls_reqcert never|allow|try|demand|hard Specifies what checks to perform on a server-supplied certificate. The meaning of the values is described in the ldap.conf(5) manual page. At least one of tls_cacertdir and tls_cacertfile is required if peer verification is enabled. tls_cacertdir PATH Specifies the directory containing X.509 certificates for peer au- thentication. This parameter is ignored when using GnuTLS. On De- bian OpenLDAP is linked against GnuTLS. tls_cacertfile PATH Specifies the path to the X.509 certificate for peer authentication. tls_randfile PATH Specifies the path to an entropy source. This parameter is ignored when using GnuTLS. On Debian OpenLDAP is linked against GnuTLS. tls_ciphers CIPHERS Specifies the ciphers to use for TLS. See your TLS implementation's documentation for further information. tls_cert PATH Specifies the path to the file containing the local certificate for client TLS authentication. tls_key PATH Specifies the path to the file containing the private key for client TLS authentication. tls_reqsan never|allow|try|demand|hard Specifies the way server Subject Alternative Name (SAN) is checked in the server-supplied certificate. The meaning of the values is described in the ldap.conf(5) manual page. tls_crlcheck none|peer|all Specifies if the Certificate Revocation List (CRL) of the CA should be used to verify if the server certificates have not been revoked. The meaning of the values is described in the ldap.conf(5) manual page. tls_crlfile PATH Specifies the path to the file containing a Certificate Revocation List to be used to verify if the server certificates. The meaning of the values is described in the ldap.conf(5) manual page. OTHER OPTIONS pagesize NUMBER Set this to a number greater than 0 to request paged results from the LDAP server in accordance with RFC2696. The default (0) is to not request paged results. This is useful for LDAP servers that contain a lot of entries (e.g. more than 500) and limit the number of entries that are returned with one request. For OpenLDAP servers you may need to set size- limit size.prtotal=unlimited for allowing more entries to be re- turned over multiple pages. nss_initgroups_ignoreusers user1,user2,... This option prevents group membership lookups through LDAP for the specified users. This can be useful in case of unavailability of the LDAP server. This option may be specified multiple times. Alternatively, the value ALLLOCAL may be used. With that value nslcd builds a full list of non-LDAP users on startup. nss_min_uid UID This option ensures that LDAP users with a numeric user id lower than the specified value are ignored. Also requests for users with a lower user id are ignored. nss_uid_offset NUMBER This option specifies an offset that is added to all LDAP numeric user ids. This can be used to avoid user id collisions with local users or, when using objectSid attributes, for compatibility rea- sons. The value from the nss_min_uid option is evaluated after applying the offset. nss_gid_offset NUMBER This option specifies an offset that is added to all LDAP numeric group ids. This can be used to avoid user id collisions with local groups or, when using objectSid attributes, for compatibility rea- sons. nss_nested_groups yes|no If this option is set, the member attribute of a group may point to another group. Members of nested groups are also returned in the higher level group and parent groups are returned when finding groups for a specific user. The default is not to perform extra searches for nested groups. nss_getgrent_skipmembers yes|no If this option is set, the group member list is not retrieved when looking up groups. Lookups for finding which groups a user belongs to will remain functional so the user will likely still get the cor- rect groups assigned on login. This can offer a speed-up on systems that have very large groups. It has the downside of returning inconsistent information about group membership which may confuse some applications. This option is not recommended for most configurations. nss_disable_enumeration yes|no If this option is set, functions which cause all user/group entries to be loaded (getpwent(), getgrent(), setspent()) from the directory will not succeed in doing so. Applications that depend on being able to sequentially read all users and/or groups may fail to oper- ate correctly. This can dramatically reduce LDAP server load in situations where there are a great number of users and/or groups. This is typically used in situations where user/program access to enumerate the entire directory is undesirable, and changing the behavior of the user/pro- gram is not possible. This option is not recommended for most con- figurations. validnames REGEX This option can be used to specify how user and group names are ver- ified within the system. This pattern is used to check all user and group names that are requested and returned from LDAP. The regular expression should be specified as a POSIX extended regu- lar expression. The expression itself needs to be separated by slash (/) characters and the 'i' flag may be appended at the end to indi- cate that the match should be case-insensitive. The default value is /^[a-z0-9._@$()]([a-z0-9._@$() \\~-]*[a-z0-9._@$()~-])?$/i ignorecase yes|no This specifies whether or not to perform searches for group, net- group, passwd, protocols, rpc, services and shadow maps using case- insensitive matching. Setting this to yes could open up the system to authorisation bypass vulnerabilities and introduce nscd cache poisoning vulnerabilities which allow denial of service. The de- fault is to perform case-sensitive filtering of LDAP search results for the above maps. pam_authc_ppolicy yes|no This option specifies whether password policy controls are requested and handled from the LDAP server when performing user authentica- tion. By default the controls are requested and handled if avail- able. pam_authc_search FILTER By default nslcd performs an LDAP search with the user's credentials after BIND (authentication) to ensure that the BIND operation was successful. The default search is a simple check to see if the user's DN exists. A search filter can be specified that will be used instead. The same substitutions as with the pam_authz_search option will be per- formed and the search should at least return one entry. The value BASE may be used to force the default search for the user DN. The value NONE may be used to indicate that no search should be per- formed after BIND. Note that some LDAP servers do not always return a correct error code as a result of a failed BIND operation (e.g. when an empty password is supplied). pam_authz_search FILTER This option allows flexible fine tuning of the authorisation check that should be performed. The search filter specified is executed and if any entries match, access is granted, otherwise access is de- nied. The search filter can contain the following variable references: $username, $service, $ruser, $rhost, $tty, $hostname, $fqdn, $do- main, $dn, and $uid. These references are substituted in the search filter using the same syntax as described in the section on at- tribute mapping expressions below. For example, to check that the user has a proper authorizedService value if the attribute is present (this almost emulates the pam_check_service_attr option in PADL's pam_ldap): (&(objectClass=posixAccount)(uid=$username)(|(authorizedService=$service)(!(authorizedService=*)))) The pam_check_host_attr option can be emulated with: (&(objectClass=posixAccount)(uid=$username)(|(host=$hostname)(host=$fqdn)(host=\\*))) This option may be specified multiple times and all specified searches should at least return one entry for access to be granted. pam_password_prohibit_message "MESSAGE" If this option is set password modification using pam_ldap will be denied and the specified message will be presented to the user in- stead. The message can be used to direct the user to an alternative means of changing their password. reconnect_invalidate DB,DB,... If this option is set, nslcd will try to flush the specified exter- nal caches on start-up and whenever a connection to the LDAP server is re-established after an error. DB can refer to one of the nsswitch maps, in which case nscd is con- tacted to flush its cache for the specified database. If DB is nf- sidmap, nfsidmap is contacted to clear its cache. Using this option ensures that external caches are cleared of incor- rect information (typically the absence of users) that may be present due to unavailability of the LDAP server. cache CACHE TIME [TIME] Configure the time entries are kept in the specified internal cache. The first TIME value specifies the time to keep found entries in the cache. The second TIME value specifies to the time to remember that a particular entry was not found. If the second parameter is ab- sent, it is assumed to be the same as the first. Time values are specified as a number followed by an s for seconds, m for minutes, h for hours or d for days. Use 0 or off to disable the cache. Currently, only the dn2uid cache is supported that is used to remem- ber DN to username lookups that are used when the member attribute is used. The default time value for this cache is 15m. SUPPORTED MAPS The following maps are supported. They are referenced as MAP in the options above. alias[es] Mail aliases. Note that most mail servers do not use the NSS inter- face for requesting mail aliases and parse /etc/aliases on their own. ether[s] Ethernet numbers (mac addresses). group Posix groups. host[s] Host names. netgroup Host and user groups used for access control. network[s] Network numbers. passwd Posix users. protocol[s] Protocol definitions (like in /etc/protocols). rpc Remote procedure call names and numbers. service[s] Network service names and numbers. shadow Shadow user password information. ATTRIBUTE MAPPING EXPRESSIONS For some attributes a mapping expression may be used to construct the re- sulting value. This is currently only possible for attributes that do not need to be used in search filters. The expressions are a subset of the double quoted string expressions in the Bourne (POSIX) shell. Instead of variable substitution, attribute lookups are done on the current entry and the attribute value is substituted. The following expressions are sup- ported: "${attr}" (or "$attr" for short) will substitute the value of the attribute "${attr:-word}" (use default) will substitute the value of the attribute or, if the attribute is not set or empty substitute the word "${attr:+word}" (use alternative) will substitute word if attribute is set, other- wise substitute the empty string "${attr:offset:length}" will substitute length characters (actually bytes) starting from po- sition offset (which is counted starting at zero); the substituted string is truncated if it is too long; in particular, it can be of length zero (if length is zero or offset falls out of the original string) "${attr#word}" remove the shortest possible match of word from the left of the at- tribute value "${attr##word}" remove the longest possible match of word from the left of the at- tribute value (pynslcd only) "${attr%word}" remove the shortest possible match of word from the right of the at- tribute value (pynslcd only) "${attr%%word}" remove the longest possible match of word from the right of the at- tribute value (pynslcd only) Only the # matching expression is supported in nslcd and only with the ? wildcard symbol. The pynslcd implementation supports full matching. Quote ("), dollar ($) and backslash (\) characters should be escaped with a backslash (\). The expressions are inspected to automatically fetch the appropriate at- tributes from LDAP. Some examples to demonstrate how these expressions may be used in attribute mapping: map shadow shadowFlag "${shadowFlag:-0}" use the shadowFlag attribute, using the value 0 as default map passd homeDirectory "${homeDirectory:-/home/$uid}" use the uid attribute to build a homeDirectory value if that at- tribute is missing map shadow shadowExpire "${isDisabled:+100}" if the isDisabled attribute is set, return 100, otherwise leave value empty map shadow userPassword "${userPassword#{crypt\}}" strip the {crypt} prefix from the userPassword attribute, returning the raw hash value FILES /etc/nslcd.conf the main configuration file /etc/nsswitch.conf Name Service Switch configuration file SEE ALSO nslcd(8), nsswitch.conf(5) AUTHOR This manual was written by Arthur de Jong <arthur@arthurdejong.org> and is based on the nss_ldap(5) manual developed by PADL Software Pty Ltd. Version 0.9.13 Feb 2025 nslcd.conf(5)
NAME | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | SUPPORTED MAPS | ATTRIBUTE MAPPING EXPRESSIONS | FILES | SEE ALSO | AUTHOR
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