That was a good hint ! Actually it does return the gid when I run getent group <group_name> . And after I run the getent group <group_name> on the client side, I can run as well id <user_name> . So, only after I run getent group <group_name> on the ipa clients I can list the user attributes. Any idea what needs to be changed in order to have that working without that workaround (obviously i cannot do that for hundred users and thousand clients) ?