Winbind mechanisms
==================

Dovecot supports NTLM and GSS-SPNEGO authentication mechanisms using Samba
[http://www.samba.org]'s winbind daemon. It is useful when you need to
authenticate users against a Windows domain (either AD or NT). This feature
exists only in Dovecot v1.1. For v1.0 you can get it as a patch
[http://dovecot.org/patches/1.0/].

By default NTLM mechanism is handled internally. You can use winbind instead by
setting:

---%<-------------------------------------------------------------------------
# v1.1:
auth_ntlm_use_winbind = yes
# v1.2+:
auth_use_winbind = yes
---%<-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The usernames, returned by winbind, can contain some domain part (either
"DOMAIN\user" or "user@example.com"). Such usernames are always transformed to
the form of "user@domain". To strip domain part (to obtain corresponding local
username, for example), set:

---%<-------------------------------------------------------------------------
auth_username_format = %n
---%<-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dovecot needs path to Samba's 'ntlm_auth' binary to perform the authentication.
You can change the path with:

---%<-------------------------------------------------------------------------
auth_winbind_helper_path = /usr/bin/ntlm_auth
---%<-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dovecot currently does blocking lookups, so if 'ntlm_auth' is slow on
responding (e.g. network problems), Dovecot blocks all other authentication
requests until it's finished.

(This file was created from the wiki on 2011-11-16 14:09)