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Asked: 2010-03-12 13:25:10 +0800 CST

Tool/Program/Script/Formula for deciphering Active Directory Connection Strings for 3rd party user integration?

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We're using WSFTP, which has an Active Directory Integration module. To populate the user accounts you need to provide a connection string akin to:

  • OU=Users,DC=domain,DC=com
  • CN=Domain Users,OU=Users,DC=domain,DC=com

Questions:

  • Is there a Tool/Program/Script/Formula that allows me to decipher how these strings might look based on what I can see in Active Directory Users & Computers?
  • Is there a proper/accepted name for these types of connection strings? I don't even know what to Google to get more information about how to format one properly
  • How would I troubleshoot the connection string if I think it looks correctly formatted, but it isn't working?

Thanks!

active-directory

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Read up on LDAP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Directory_Access_Protocol

    Those are LDAP Distinguished names.

    As to how they look in AD, lets take this simple structure: 

    mydomain.local
|
|-- UserContainer
  |
  |-- userA

    the DN for this user would be: CN=userA,OU=UserContainer,dc=mydomain,dc=local (note I'm not using the default "users" container, that little bestie is a Microsoftism, and not a real container. In AD it's actually a CN (aka a leaf object, that magically has users in it instead of the container (OU) object it should be ... grrrr))

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  2. Tool to browse LDAP [link text][1]

    [1]: [1]: http://www.ldapbrowser.com/"Softerra LDAP Browser"

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  3. On Windows 2003/2008 or workstation with RSAT you could use dsquery command. It gives you ldap path for object.

    dsquery user -name USER_COMMON_NAME

    USER_COMMON_NAME is not equal your user login, I don't remember, but probably it is equal description field from your Active Directory Users and Computers console.

    Alternatively, you could use ldapsearch command from linux box (but first, you must configure openldap library in /etc/openldap/ldap.conf). I don't remember its syntax, but you must provide some account with password (Bind account) to bind to ldap from your Active Directory.

    Here is link to article about LDAP in Windows

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