What type of group to choose in OpenLDAP for grouping users

Question

I need to know what kind of group should I use for grouping users in LDAP.

I basically need the function MemberOf, to get some permissions based on groups membership.

Example:

• Users
  • User 1
  • User 2
  • User 3
• Groups
  • Group 1
  • Group 2

User 1 is member of Group 1 and Group 2.

The groups need to be dynamic, like Active Directory.

The questions comes because I have these for choose:

Samba: Group Mapping

User Group

Generic: Posix Group

The same goes for Users, which one should I choose?

Generic: User Account

Samba: Account

I can't find a good site where the differences are shown, any link will be much appreciated.

Answer 1

LDAP/X.500 defines only group objects which have member attributes, the inverse relation where a user object has a memberof attribute in OpenLDAP can be achieved with the memberof overlay. NDS/eDir and AD make this happen by magic. LDAP proper does not define dynamic bi-directional member/group objects/attributes. Related to that overlay is the refint overlay which helps complete the illusion (and also addresses the mildly irritating problem of a group always requiring at least one member).

There are generally two interesting group types to pick, groupOfNames or groupOfUniqueNames, the first one GroupOfNames is suitable for most purposes. The latter, groupOfUniqueNames, has a slightly esoteric feature: it allows the member DN to contain a numeric UID suffix, to preserve uniqueness of members across time should DNs be reassigned to different entities. Neither form enforces unique DNs in the list of members.

Other types of groups have distinct purposes (defined by schema and application). A less common group-type object is RFC 2256 roles (organizationalRole type, with roleOccupant attribute), this is implicitly used for role-based access control, but is otherwise similar to the other group types (thanks to EJP for the tip).

The posixGroup type represents the conventional unix groups, identified by a gidNUmber and listing memberUid's. It is not a general purpose group object in the DIT, it's up to the application (i.e. the LDAP client layer) to implement/observe it.

When it comes to user accounts, account object-types should not be thought of as exclusive, each type typically adds attributes to a user object in a compatible way (though an objectClass can be exclusive if it's structural, that's not something you'll often have to worry about generally).