Overview

HP CIFS Server must resolve the fact that HP-UX and Microsoft Windows use different technologies to represent user and group identity. Winbind is a CIFS feature which is one of several different ways in which CIFS can map the Windows implementation of user and group security identifiers, SIDs, to the HP-UX implementation of user and group identifiers, UIDs and GIDs. Further, there are several different ways to deploy winbind to achieve this mapping. The purpose of winbind is to automate the creation of UIDs and GIDs and maintain their correspondence to the appropriate Windows SIDs in order to minimize identity management efforts.

Winbind is an important feature to understand before you configure HP CIFS Server because choosing an appropriate configuration for your environment is the key to minimize IT management problems. Choosing the best way to map identities for your environment is important because directories and files populate file systems with permissions based on the identities of the owners. Over time, the difficulty of changing user maps will increase unless the proper configuration is chosen initially. This chapter will help you understand winbind and configure CIFS appropriately.

For more information about winbind, refer to chapter 23, "Winbind:Use of Domain Accounts" in the Samba 3.0 HOWTO Reference Guide at the following web site:

http://us3.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/