[Fedora-directory-users] RHDS and winsync... how to sync disablement of users

[Aaron Oas]

I have a Win2003 AD server and a RHDS 8.0 server, with a windows sync
agreement between them.  The SSL, win sync agreement and the password
sync are all working fine.

Our intent is to do core user management from one place: AD, and then
have various apps and linux hosts using the RHDS server as needed.

One of the key user management functions is disabling an account when
the person leaves.  We don't want to delete accounts, because you lose
some ability to trace ownership after the fact etc.

Using the "disable account" option in AD does not carry over, since AD
just stores that flag in a bitmask type of attribute
(userAccountControl), and winsync does not map that attribute (not
surprisingly since the attribute is ugly).  

Expiring the account in AD also doesn't work.  It seems to map
improperly in the winsync mapping: the time value that ends up on the
RHDS side is translated wildy inaccurately in the RHDS console (hundreds
of years off).

I am looking at writing a perl daemon to watch AD, pull the "user
disabled" value from the userAccountControl attributes of all the users
in AD, then map that to the nsaccountlock attribute in RHDS.  This
includes resulting woes of: do I try to track changes and see which side
made the change first (i.e. AD -> DS   versus   DS -> AD)?  Or do I just
take the "easy" way out and assume AD is right, etc. etc.

Is there any better way to sync the disabling of accounts between AD and
RHDS/FDS?


Aaron Oas