How User Name Mapping works?

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How User Name Mapping works?

User Name Mapping is the core NFS authentication component in Services for UNIX, Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Vista. It bridges the gap presented by difference in user identification methods used by Windows and UNIX systems. It plays equally important role for Server for NFS and Client for NFS both.

When Server for NFS receives NFS access request from a UNIX client, all it gets is UID, GID and a set of auxiliary GIDs (which represents the secondary group memberships of that user in the UNIX world). Server for NFS then typically performs the following actions to authenticate the UNIX user who’s trying to access Windows NFS share –

    • Server for NFS uses User Name Mapping to obtain the corresponding Windows user name or group name.
    • After the user name is obtained, Server for NFS connects to a domain controller (for a domain account), or to local security authority for a local user –
      • The domain controller authenticates the domain account using Kerberos extension called Service-For-User (S4U).
      • Server for NFS Authentication is needed if the user account in question is a local account. Without Server for NFS authentication, the local security authority cannot authenticate the user and access to the UNIX client will be denied.

NFS authentication may not work for domain accounts if you have domain controllers running Window 2000 operating system. S4U extensions is not supported in Windows 2000 and earlier. In such cases, you need to install Server for NFS Authentication on all of your domain controllers to get the NFS authentication to work.

When you use Client for NFS to access a UNIX NFS share, it’s the UNIX NFS Server which authenticates the Windows user at the end. Since Windows users do not have UNIX-style UIDs and GIDs, the Client for NFS gets this information from the User Name Mapping service and uses them to connect to the UNIX NFS Server.

The NFS components included with Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Vista have RFC2307 support and can directly fetch the UIDs and GIDs from Active Directory. This post on this same blog talks more about this feature and User Name Mapping. The Active Directory domain, however, needs to be on the R2 schema level for that to work.