AIX 7.1 - Samba 4 File Shares and Integration with Active Directory Issues

Hi. Ive recently upgraded Samba on an AIX server to Samba 4. The aim is to allow a specific group of Windows AD users to access some AIX file shares (with no requirement to enter passwords) - using AD to authenticate.

Currently I have:

  • Samba 4 installed ( and 3 daemons running)
  • Installed Kerberos with windbind in config

Joined domain using kinit and net join using regular domain username.

wbinfo -u  - lists all users in Windows AD
wbinfo -g  - lists all groups in Windows AD
wbinfo -n "ad group" - gives me an aix uid

I had initial problems when trying to access my AIX shares with SID mapping errors in the samba logs.

To resolve this I created a user mapping file called users.map as follows
root = *

Then added this line to smb.conf

username map = /etc/users.map

Now any AD Windows user can access my AIX file shares without needing to enter a password. I can change this map file to a single domain user or list of specific users to lock it down but this isnt what I need. I want to only allow one specific AD group to access this fileshare.

If people join or leave the company Id have to keep editing this file..

How do I go about getting this working with access by one AD group only?. If I remove the username map entry I cant access the file shares at all and prompted for login/pass. I saw references to valid users = @"DOMAIN\AD Group" but this wont allow access. Its as if samba is looking for a local user called this on the AIX box not to check AD for it as I expected..

Is this linked to config changes in
etc/security/user for WINBIND or are these only needed for ssh access to AIX with AD logins?

Or could this be down to not using a domain admin account when I joined the AD domain using kinit and net join?

Im thinking of installing ldap if I cant get this working with winbind but surely its overkill.. Any help is appreciated with this final hurdle..

Is this a near duplicate post of this one?

Samba 3.6 on AIX 7.1 - Windows 10 Access to AIX file shares using Active Directory authentication

I assume so, and so I am closing this discussion. Please continue in the discussion above.

Thanks.