Connecting FreeNAS 8 to Mac OS X Lion LDAP Server

[samadmin]

I currently have Mac OS X Lion Server running from a MacMini and want to use it purely as an LDAP server for authentication for FreeNAS 8. I have FreeNAS setup and running on a VM, all features working correctly and as expected however I cannot connect to my LDAP server (MacMini).

Error message; Nss_ldap: could not search LDAP server – server is unavailable

For LDAP service settings in FreeNAS, I know my Hostname and Base DN are correct (exact copies of what I set originally and ones that are shown in server - open directory overview) however I am unsure what to enter for Root bind DN, password and Suffix’s. I have researched into where I can find these out and other than following the FreeNAS examples it appears there is a way to find out within the Server Workgroup Manager specific to my settings – however this function is unavailable to me and cannot be ‘ticked’ to view for some strange reason.

Some forums explain how Root bind DN should be “uid=admin, dc=…” and others “cn=admin, dc=…” – I’m rather confused and would appreciate your help or advice with this.

 

[drdodge]

Are you able to get LDAP service to turn on? I am having trouble just with this. I have used the LDAP settings as described in other posts without success!

hostname: homer.home.copiouscom.com (The OD server)
baseDN: dc=copiouscom,dc=com (you can get this from SA in the Info tab of OD)
Allow Anonymous Binding: enable
Root bind DN: uid=diradmin,cn=users,dc=copiouscom,dc=com
Root bind password: diradmin password
Password Encryption: md5
User Suffix: cn=users
Group Suffix: cn=groups
Password Suffix: cn=users
Machine Suffix: cn=computers
Turn on/off TLS: <blank>
Self signed certificate: <blank>
Auxillary Parameters: <following five lines>
ldap_version 3
timelimit 30
bind_timelimit 30
bind_policy soft
pam_ldap_attribute uid

from here FreeNAS 7 Forum

 

[samadmin]

Yeah I can get the LDAP service to turn on however it does seem to lag a little - so visually it doesn't seem to be on however once the button is clicked an error appears in the FreeNAS console, so I'm guessing its related. I will keep trying however I have also read that LDAP isn't fully supported by FreeNAS 8 yet, which could describe some of the issues me and others are having.

 

[drdodge]

oh dear, it would be nice to be able to authenticate my shares via OD for our apple users. Any better ideas, besides direct attached storage?

thanks!

 

[samadmin]

I'm looking into using GlobalSAN and ISCSI to use FreeNAS as a NAS drive for the Lion Server and almost doing authentication and storage from the other side. So you connect to the lion server first and it tells the user where it can save files instead of connecting to FreeNAS and it authenticating against an OD server. It might not be possible, depends how the Lion server will react to using FreeNAS using ISCSI but will post back when I get time to have a play about.

 

[drdodge]

I tried out GlobalSAN quickly and couldn't get my Lion client to connect. I didn't fiddle for too long, so it may have been a config error with the FreeNAS. It's unfortunate that it's not free anymore too (as of version 5 I understand)

This was what I was going to try first, but i wanted to be able to access the iSCSI from two places and this is not very good with HFS+
If I have it on the Lion server only, then I can't have my windows clients access the shares as they are authenticated by AD and I'm having all sorts of trouble binding the Lion server to the AD!

any suggestions??

Cheers