Join an Additional Ubuntu DC to Samba4 AD DC for FailOver

Replication - Part 5
https://www.tecmint.com/join-additional-ubuntu-dc-to-samba4-ad-dc-failover-replication/

This tutorial will show you how to add a second Samba4 domain controller, provisioned
on Ubuntu 16.04 server, to the existing Samba AD DC forest in order to provide a degree
of load balancing/failover for some crucial AD DC services, especially for services such as
DNS and AD DC LDAP schema with SAM database.

Requirements

1. Create an Active Directory Infrastructure with Samba4 on Ubuntu – Part 1

This article is a Part-5 of Samba4 AD DC series as follows:

Part 2: Manage Samba4 AD Infrastructure from Linux Command Line

Part 3: Manage Samba4 Active Directory Infrastructure from Windows10 via RSAT
Part 4: Manage Samba4 AD Domain Controller DNS and Group Policy from Windows

Step 1: Initial Configuration for Samba4 Setup

1. Before you start to actually perform domain joining for the second DC, you need to take
care of few initial settings. First, make sure the hostname of the system which will be
integrated into Samba4 AD DC contains a descriptive name.

Assuming that the hostname of the first provisioned realm is called adc1, you can name the
second DC with adc2 in order to provide a consistent naming scheme across your Domain
Controllers.

To change the system hostname you can issue the below command.

# hostnamectl set-hostname adc2

else you can manually edit /etc/hostname file and add a new line with the desired name.

# nano /etc/hostname

Here add the hostname.

adc2

2. Next, open local system resolution file and add an entry with the IP address witch points
to the short name and FQDN of the main domain controller, as illustrated in the below
screenshot.

Through this tutorial, the primary DC name is adc1.tecmint.lan and it resolves to

192.168.1.254 IP address.
# nano /etc/hosts

Add the following line:

IP_of_main_DC FQDN_of_main_DC short_name_of_main_DC

Set Hostname for Samba4 AD DC

3. On the next step, open /etc/network/interfaces and assign a static IP address for your
system as illustrated in the below screenshot.

Pay attention to dns-nameservers and dns-search variables. These values should be

configured to point back to the IP address of the primary Samba4 AD DC and realm in
order for DNS resolution to work correctly.

Restart the network daemon in order to reflect changes. Verify /etc/resolv.conf file to
assure that both DNS values from your network interface are updated to this file.
# nano /etc/network/interfaces
Edit and replace with your custom IP settings:
auto ens33
iface ens33 inet static
address 192.168.1.253
netmask 255.255.255.0
brodcast 192.168.1.1
gateway 192.168.1.1
dns-nameservers 192.168.1.254
dns-search tecmint.lan

Restart network service and confirm changes.

# systemctl restart networking.service
# cat /etc/resolv.conf

Configure DNS for Samba4 AD

The dns-search value will automatically append the domain name when you query a host
by its short name (will form the FQDN).

4. In order to test if DNS resolution is working as expected, issue a series of ping

commands against your domain short name, FQDN and realm as shown in the below
screenshot.

In all these cases Samba4 AD DC DNS server should reply with the IP address of your
main DC.

Verify DNS Resolution for Samba4 AD

5. The final additional step that you need to take care off is time synchronization with your
main Domain Controller. This can be accomplished by installing NTP client utility on your
system by issuing the below command:

# apt-get install ntpdate

6. Assuming that you want to manually force time synchronization with samba4 AD DC,
run ntpdate command against the primary DC by issuing the following command.
# ntpdate adc1

Time Synchronize with Samba4 AD

Step 2: Install Samba4 with Required Dependencies

7. In order to enroll Ubuntu 16.04 system into your domain, first install Samba4, Kerberos
client and a few other important packages for later use from Ubuntu official repositories
by issuing the below command:
# apt-get install samba krb5-user krb5-config winbind libpam-winbind libnss-winbind

Install Samba4 in Ubuntu

8. During the installation you will need to provide Kerberos realm name. Write your
domain name with upper cases and press [Enter] key to finish the installation process.

Configure Kerberos Authentication for Samba4

9. After the packages installation finishes, verify the settings by requesting a Kerberos
ticket for a domain administrator using kinit command. Use klist command to list granted
Kerberos ticket.
# kinit domain-admin-user@YOUR_DOMAIN.TLD
# klist
Verify Kerberos on Samba4 Domain

Step 3: Join to Samba4 AD DC as a Domain Controller

10. Before integrating your machine into Samba4 DC, first make sure all Samba4 daemons
running on your system are stopped and, also, rename the default Samba configuration file
in order to start clean. While provisioning the domain controller, samba will create a new
configuration file from scratch.
# systemctl stop samba-ad-dc smbd nmbd winbind
# mv /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.initial

11. In order to start the domain joining process, first start only samba-ad-dc daemon, after
which you will run samba-tool command to join the realm using an account with
administrative privileges on your domain.
# samba-tool domain join your_domain DC -U "your_domain_admin"

Domain integration excerpt:

# samba-tool domain join tecmint.lan DC -U"tecmint_user"

Sample Output

Finding a writeable DC for domain 'tecmint.lan'

Found DC adc1.tecmint.lan
Password for [WORKGROUP\tecmint_user]:
workgroup is TECMINT
realm is tecmint.lan
checking sAMAccountName
Deleted CN=ADC2,CN=Computers,DC=tecmint,DC=lan
Adding CN=ADC2,OU=Domain Controllers,DC=tecmint,DC=lan
Adding CN=ADC2,CN=Servers,CN=Default-First-Site-Name,CN=Sites,CN=Configuration,DC=tecmint,
Adding CN=NTDS Settings,CN=ADC2,CN=Servers,CN=Default-First-Site-Name,CN=Sites,CN=Configur
Adding SPNs to CN=ADC2,OU=Domain Controllers,DC=tecmint,DC=lan
Setting account password for ADC2$
Enabling account
Calling bare provision
Looking up IPv4 addresses
Looking up IPv6 addresses
No IPv6 address will be assigned
Setting up share.ldb
Setting up secrets.ldb
Setting up the registry
Setting up the privileges database
Setting up idmap db
Setting up SAM db
Setting up sam.ldb partitions and settings
Setting up sam.ldb rootDSE
Pre-loading the Samba 4 and AD schema
A Kerberos configuration suitable for Samba 4 has been generated at /var/lib/samba/private
Provision OK for domain DN DC=tecmint,DC=lan
Starting replication
Schema-DN[CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,DC=tecmint,DC=lan] objects[402/1550] linked_values[0/
Schema-DN[CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,DC=tecmint,DC=lan] objects[804/1550] linked_values[0/
Schema-DN[CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,DC=tecmint,DC=lan] objects[1206/1550] linked_values[0
Schema-DN[CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,DC=tecmint,DC=lan] objects[1550/1550] linked_values[0
Analyze and apply schema objects
Partition[CN=Configuration,DC=tecmint,DC=lan] objects[402/1614] linked_values[0/0]
Partition[CN=Configuration,DC=tecmint,DC=lan] objects[804/1614] linked_values[0/0]
Partition[CN=Configuration,DC=tecmint,DC=lan] objects[1206/1614] linked_values[0/0]
Partition[CN=Configuration,DC=tecmint,DC=lan] objects[1608/1614] linked_values[0/0]
Partition[CN=Configuration,DC=tecmint,DC=lan] objects[1614/1614] linked_values[28/0]
Replicating critical objects from the base DN of the domain
Partition[DC=tecmint,DC=lan] objects[97/97] linked_values[24/0]
Partition[DC=tecmint,DC=lan] objects[380/283] linked_values[27/0]
Done with always replicated NC (base, config, schema)
Replicating DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=tecmint,DC=lan
Partition[DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=tecmint,DC=lan] objects[45/45] linked_values[0/0]
Replicating DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=tecmint,DC=lan
Partition[DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=tecmint,DC=lan] objects[18/18] linked_values[0/0]
Committing SAM database
Sending DsReplicaUpdateRefs for all the replicated partitions
Setting isSynchronized and dsServiceName
Setting up secrets database
Joined domain TECMINT (SID S-1-5-21-715537322-3397311598-55032968) as a DC
Join Domain to Samba4 AD DC

12. After the Ubuntu with samba4 software has been integrated into the domain, open
samba main configuration file and add the following lines:
# nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Add following excerpt to smb.conf file.

dns forwarder = 192.168.1.1
idmap_ldb:use rfc2307 = yes

template shell = /bin/bash

winbind use default domain = true
winbind offline logon = false
winbind nss info = rfc2307
winbind enum users = yes
winbind enum groups = yes

Replace dns forwarder IP address with your own DNS forwarder IP. Samba will forward
all DNS resolution queries that are outside your domain authoritative zone to this IP
address.

13. Finally, restart samba daemon to reflect changes and check active directory replication
by executing the following commands.
# systemctl restart samba-ad-dc
# samba-tool drs showrepl

Configure Samba4 DNS

14. Additionally, rename initial Kerberos configuration file from /etc path and replace it
with the new krb5.conf configuration file generated by samba while provisioning the
domain.

The file is located in /var/lib/samba/private directory. Use Linux symlink to link this file to
/etc directory.
# mv /etc/krb5.conf /etc/krb5.conf.initial
# ln -s /var/lib/samba/private/krb5.conf /etc/
# cat /etc/krb5.conf
Configure Kerberos

15. Also, verify Kerberos authentication with samba krb5.conf file. Request a ticket for an
administrator user and list the cached ticket by issuing the below commands.

# kinit administrator
# klist

Verify Kerberos Authentication with Samba

Step 4: Additional Domain Services Validations

16. The first test you need to perform is Samba4 DC DNS resolution. To validate your
domain DNS resolution, query the domain name using host command against a few
crucial AD DNS records as presented on the below screenshot.

The DNS server should replay by now with a pair of two IP addresses for each query.
# host your_domain.tld
# host -t SRV _kerberos._udp.your_domain.tld # UDP Kerberos SRV record
# host -t SRV _ldap._tcp.your_domain.tld # TCP LDAP SRV record

Verify Samba4 DC DNS

17. These DNS records should also be visible from an enrolled Windows machine with
RSAT tools installed. Open DNS Manager and expand to your domain tcp records as shown
in the below image.
Verify DNS Records on Windows RSAT Tool

18. The next test should indicate if domain LDAP replication works as expected. Using
samba-tool, create an account on the second domain controller and verify if the account is
automatically replicated on the first Samba4 AD DC.

On adc2:

# samba-tool user add test_user

On adc1:

# samba-tool user list | grep test_user

Create User Account on Samba4 AD

Verify Replication on Samba4 AD

19. You can also create an account from a Microsoft AD UC console and verify if the
account appears on both domain controllers.

By default, the account should be automatically created on both samba domain controllers.
Query the account name from adc1 using wbinfo command.

Create Account from Microsoft AD UC

Verify Account Replication On Samba4 AD

20. As a fact, open AD UC console from Windows, expand to Domain Controllers and you
should see both enrolled DC machines.
Verify Samba4 Domain Controllers

Step 5: Enable Samba4 AD DC Service

21. In order to enable samba4 AD DC services system-wide, first disable some old and
unused Samba daemons and enable only samba-ad-dc service by running the below
commands:

# systemctl disable smbd nmbd winbind

# systemctl enable samba-ad-dc

Enable Samba4 AD DC Services

22. If you remotely administer Samba4 domain controller from a Microsoft client or you
have other Linux or Windows clients integrated into your domain, make sure you mention
the IP address of the adc2 machine to their network interface DNS server IP settings in
order to gain a level of redundancy.
The below screenshots illustrates the configurations required for a Windows or a
Debian/Ubuntu client.

Configure Client to Administer Samba4 DC

Configure Linux Client to Administer Samba4 DC

Assuming that the first DC with 192.168.1.254 goes offline, reverse the order of the DNS
server IP addresses in the configuration file so it won’t try to query first an unavailable
DNS server.

Finally, in case you want to perform local authentication on a Linux system with a Samba4
Active Directory account or grant root privileges for AD LDAP accounts in Linux, read the
steps 2 and 3 from the tutorial Manage Samba4 AD Infrastructure from Linux Command
Line.

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