How to get Linux users list from LDAP

Question

We've just linked one of our Linux host to LDAP and ActiveDirectory. Now I'm trying to check how I get list of users and their details from within the Linux side.

Answer 1

You can achieve that by either typing in

getent passwd |less

or performing a LDAP search, such as

ldapsearch -x -LLL uid=*

(assuming that the bind DN and credentials are set in the ldap.conf file or you have read access to AD in other ways).

Answer 2

Linux usually uses PAM for its authentication needs. It's an open architecture, so you can use the pam_ldap module to use LDAP on Linux.

Answer 3

Use the ldapsearch command line tool to query the directory server for information. For more information, see "LDAP: Mastering ldapsearch".

Answer 4

If you want to check if your Linux sees the POSIX entries from a LDAP server, use

getent passwd

The output should display entries both from local /etc/passwd and LDAP server. If you are wondering how to get to the point, when there's something to check, this may prove to be a good starting point.