Tight samba integration with zimbra

[daniellawson]

I've checked the forums and there doesn't seem to have been a conclusive answer reached on whether the hooks needed to tightly integrate samba and zimbra exist or not.

I've installed Zimbra under Debian Sarge, using an external LDAP server (on a different Debian Sarge server). Zimbra is working fine. My domain is "foo.com" for the purpose of this discussion, so my basedn is dc=foo,dc=com, and my users are being set up in ou=people,dc=foo,dc=com

On a third server I have samba installed. I've configured Samba to use the LDAP server I just mentioned, using the idealx smbldap tools. Samba is configured to look in ou=people,dc=foo,dc=com for users, which is fine.

In order to enable a user for samba, you would normally just run 'smbpasswd -a $username' in order to create the extra LDAP objectClasses and attributes needed. However, this depends on the $username object already having certain objectClasses and attributes enabled, such as posixAccount and uid.
If these don't exist (and they don't, with the current Zimbra setup), it won't create the account.

Zimbra won't create an account if the specified dn (eg, uid=testuser,dc=people,dc=foo,dc=com) already exists.

Other tools, such as 'change password utility' (http://cpu.sf.net/ ) which is designed to allow tight integration of LDAP into unix accounts, will create the right sort of entries (a full unix account) for smbpasswd to modify, however it too won't create an account if the specified dn already exists.

There are a number of solutions I can see to this, including:

a) Zimbra tests if a new account dn exists, and if does, instead of failing, checks to see if it is already a zimbra account. If not, it asks the admin if they wish to modify the account to be a zimbra account.

b) Zimbra allows an admin to specify pre- or post- commands which are executed on account creation. Site admins can then write scripts to perform whatever they want

c) Zimbra adds in support for adding posix/samba accounts directly, perhaps by integrating idealx's smbldap tools

d) I modify cpu to add all the zimbra objectClasses and attributes, and just use cpu

e) I write a custom script to add the zimbra objectClasses and attributes to a given dn, and use cpu/smbpasswd

f) I write a complete new frontend for managing everything.


Options d, e and f require me having some understanding of attributes such as the ZimbraId attribute. They also don't meet my requirement of tight integration (so the site admin, who is definitely not IT savvy, can use this to create accounts). Option f does, but is a waste of time - zimbra has the frontend, I just need some hooks!

Of the first three options, I think c) - tight integration of zimbra with samba etc, perhaps via idealx's smbldap scripts, is the best. Any of the first three options would do though.

Any thoughts?

I'm more than willing to help out, as it looks as though zimbra is going to become a core part of my infrastructre. I suspect I won't get a good answer for the current deployment however, so I might just go back to separate databases for now.

Thanks

[KevinH]

You can use zmprov today from the command line and do b) with your custom code.

[StefanD]

Daniel,
> f) I write a complete new frontend for managing everything.

I also use samba with the idealx scripts and was tired of using the M$ user manager, so I start writing my own user manager frontend in php that can create/modify/delete users and groups.
It was also implemented to manage postfix/cyrus mail accounts, but since we are gone use Zimbra now, I'm gone change it, so that it can manage zimbra accounts.
I think it will be ready in about one month, depending how long the user migration from Lotus notes to zimbra will take. (It will not be as fancy like the zimbra UI, but it will do the job).

I'll post the url when it's ready.

cheers,
Stefan

[Greg]

Originally Posted by StefanD

Daniel,
> f) I write a complete new frontend for managing everything.

I also use samba with the idealx scripts and was tired of using the M$ user manager, so I start writing my own user manager frontend in php that can create/modify/delete users and groups.
It was also implemented to manage postfix/cyrus mail accounts, but since we are gone use Zimbra now, I'm gone change it, so that it can manage zimbra accounts.
I think it will be ready in about one month, depending how long the user migration from Lotus notes to zimbra will take. (It will not be as fancy like the zimbra UI, but it will do the job).

I'll post the url when it's ready.

cheers,
Stefan

There are API hooks in the Admin UI that allow adding custom modules to the the Admin UI. It is somewhat similar to Zimlet framework, but it allows changing almost anything in the UI. Unfortunately, this API is not documented yet. The bottom line is that if you can make your PHP scripts talk XML or javascript, it will be very easy to add this kind of module to Zimbra's admin UI. The module will call your PHP scripts before, after or instead of Zimbra's servlets. I can explain how to extend the admin UI and help with implementation if you are interested.

[graffiti]

There are API hooks in the Admin UI that allow adding custom modules to the the Admin UI. It is somewhat similar to Zimlet framework, but it allows changing almost anything in the UI. Unfortunately, this API is not documented yet. The bottom line is that if you can make your PHP scripts talk XML or javascript, it will be very easy to add this kind of module to Zimbra's admin UI. The module will call your PHP scripts before, after or instead of Zimbra's servlets. I can explain how to extend the admin UI and help with implementation if you are interested.

WOW! This is what I have been waiting. I'm very interested in extending the admin UI, please help.

Regards,

-g

[daniellawson]

Originally Posted by Greg

There are API hooks in the Admin UI that allow adding custom modules to the the Admin UI. It is somewhat similar to Zimlet framework, but it allows changing almost anything in the UI. Unfortunately, this API is not documented yet. The bottom line is that if you can make your PHP scripts talk XML or javascript, it will be very easy to add this kind of module to Zimbra's admin UI. The module will call your PHP scripts before, after or instead of Zimbra's servlets. I can explain how to extend the admin UI and help with implementation if you are interested.

That sounds pretty well spot on for what I want. A howto would be greatly appreciated!

[StefanD]

Originally Posted by Greg

There are API hooks in the Admin UI that allow adding custom modules to the the Admin UI. It is somewhat similar to Zimlet framework, but it allows changing almost anything in the UI. Unfortunately, this API is not documented yet. The bottom line is that if you can make your PHP scripts talk XML or javascript, it will be very easy to add this kind of module to Zimbra's admin UI. The module will call your PHP scripts before, after or instead of Zimbra's servlets. I can explain how to extend the admin UI and help with implementation if you are interested.

I'm really interested to integrate samba into the zimbra UI/framework, I'm not a great coder but I do know how to manipulate the ldap samba entries. We have some in-house java developers who know how to make soap services, so if you can give some docs, drafts or links to files about the API then i can try to make 'zimbra_loves_samba' a real beauty .

[Greg]

I'll put a howto together next week. Just keep an eye on this thread

[Greg]

I started a wiki that describes how to extend Admin UI. The extension API was not initially really meant for public access, so it isn't well documented and is a bit clumsy, in a sense that it serves the purpose for which it was initially created, but it lacks features. As I was writing the doc today, I was adding features that seemed important. A side effect of this is that what is described in the wiki will work only with the latest JavaScript UI code that you can get from CVS. So, please read this http://wiki.zimbra.com/index.php?tit...nding_Admin_UI and let me know if it helps and how it can be improved

[lfarkas]

hi,
i find this thread about zimbra and samba integration. is there any progress in this field? imho it'd be very intersting for a lots of people and made zimbra a killer app on linux.