Hi Team,
In our environment we have AIX hosts which is connected for users authentication via 'Active Directory'.
It works fine when AD users login but it references /etc/security/user local file settings for any attributes. For Example: 'loginretries' value set in /etc/security/user is referenced and AD account gets locked locally if the set number of loginretries crosses the limit which is set as default attributes locally.
AIX hosts has 'Centrify' installed, this is the software via which AIX hosts are joined to AD domain.
As mentioned, we are using Centrify as a product on AIX to connect AD and registry is already set to 'CENTRIFYDC', so AD users are able to login successfully. The only issue is users are picking the other attributes like 'loginretries' and others from /etc/security/user. Below is the output from one of the AIX host added into AD domain.
registry=CENTRIFYDC SYSTEM=CENTRIFYDC OR CENTRIFYDC[NOTFOUND] AND (compat)
IBM has looked at this via case TS007993518 and below comments is from IBM:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unfortunately, AIX needs to find value for the attributes, if it's not defined remotely, it will be pulled locally from the default stanza within the /etc/security/user, there's no certain configuration to restrict it, in-order to pull values from the AD, then these not defined attributes will need to be defined on the AD with certain value in-order to pull it's value from there instead of pulling it locally. And as clarified previously AIX do it in the following order:
1) It checks if the attribute is defined on the AD (remotely) for that user.
2) It checks if there's a remote ‘default user’ with that attribute defined.
3) It checks in /etc/security/user to see if there is a stanza for that user with that attribute defined.
4) Then last check, it will take the value from the /etc/security/user default stanzas
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We have already tried defining attribute 'loginretries=0' at Centrify end and 'lsuser' output for the AD user shows attributes which is defined at Centrify end, if its not defined at Centrify end it shows attributes which is default in /etc/security/user. But with this value set to '0' user will never be locked and can keep on trying with passwords which is an audit issue.
Not comparing here with Linux as AIX and Linux are different flavours but just to mention that Linux environment too is connected to AD via Centrify and when AD user logs in, they don't get locked due to any OS restrictions locally, when user account is unlocked at AD end, the account can be used again to login on the Linux OS. No attribute is defined at Centrify end or locally.
Currently in AIX, AD user logs-in and references local attributes defined in /etc/security/user and if loginretries is set to '5', the AD user account gets locked at OS level and a sys admin is needed to reset the failure counts before AD user can login again with correct password.
We were looking for a similar feature that AD users only resolves and authenticate via AD and no local attributes are referenced which is set in /etc/security/user file.
Please let me know if you have further questions.
Regards,
Manish Anand
