Active Directory authentication with Samba 4

Samba is an open source implementation of multiple protocols that are required for interoperability with Microsoft Windows machines, including the SMB file-sharing protocol (which is where the Samba name came from). Apart from file sharing, it also implements authentication and user management – initially, it only supported Windows NT domains, but since 4.0.0, it has full support for Active Directory that’s compatible with Windows Server 2008 and also includes built-in LDAP and DNS backends, which makes small installations very simple to deploy.

Setting up the domain controller

First, you will need to install the Samba domain controller package:

$ sudo dnf install samba-dc

Then, you may want to remove all configuration files for Samba and the Kerberos daemon to ensure a clean state:

$ sudo rm -f /etc/samba/smb.conf
$ sudo rm -f /etc/krb5.conf

Samba includes a command for automatically provisioning domain controllers...