More Information on the book
 What
is this book about?
Discover
how to
Why
have we written this book?
Who
is this book for?
A
really important warning
How
to use this book
Syntax
and naming conventions
Feedback
and comments
What is this book about?
This book peels back the covers on Active Directory®
and provides you with the technical in-depth details of objects and attributes
and how they interact. The book centres around our Geek’s Reference (Chapter 3)
which provides an in-depth explanation of the key objects and attributes in a
clear and precise manner. Explanations are backed up with solid working
examples showing you how to interrogate the directory using the Microsoft
support tool LDP. The majority of techniques that we show you apply equally
well to the Microsoft® Windows®
2000 Server and Microsoft® Windows®
Server 2003 families.
Our testing has been performed using the RC1 build of Microsoft®
Windows® Server 2003 and we
don’t anticipate any significant functional changes in the final release.
Now, we all like a challenge… As the presses were about to roll with the first
print run, Microsoft announced the product name change from Microsoft®
Windows® .NET Server 2003
to Microsoft® Windows®
Server 2003. Whilst we have changed all product references, we cannot be
certain if any programmatic variable references will be impacted by the name
change. For example .NET forest functionality may well be renamed to 2003
forest functionality. We have a bet running on this! For the moment, we have
kept the current names and our wagers are in the corner!
LDP allows you to create native Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
commands to query and modify the Active Directory®.
Through the use of this powerful support tool, if you have the right
credentials, you will be able to gain access and effect change to all objects
and attributes within the Active Directory®.
This book provides you with the skills you need to perform in-depth
investigations into the directory. An essential companion if you are
troubleshooting or responding to change requests.
Discover how to
-
Display deleted directory objects
-
Create or modify any type of object
-
Check if an attribute is indexed
-
Locate the security principal for an unknown account
-
Examine which attributes are published in the global catalog
-
Investigate which attributes are members of the ANR set
-
Test individual bits within an attribute
-
Gain ultimate access to the Active Directory®
Why have we written this book?
The Active Directory® publishes
information about data and services available throughout your enterprise. Your
business systems will be dependant on you establishing and maintaining a rock
solid infrastructure. There are many texts on designing and deploying the
Active Directory®. These
texts describe how to create and maintain objects and their associated
attributes through the standard user interface tools, but what if you need to
go beyond that?
Your systems are dependant on the correct representation of resources within
the directory.
-
If an application is regularly searching for an attribute value, that value
should be indexed. How do you know which attributes are indexed?
-
Property sets allow you to configure security on a number of attributes through
a single Access Control Entry (ACE). How do you know which attributes are
members of a property set?
-
If you want to perform enterprise-wide searches for a particular attribute
value, that value needs to be in the global catalog (GC). How do you know which
attributes are published to the global catalog?
We’ve often heard the complaint from system administrators, architects and
programmers that they cannot find this information documented.
You could argue that it would be irresponsible for Microsoft to document much
of this because it could be conceived as complete. The directory is totally
extensible and dynamic so any documentation apart from your own will invariably
be out of date. Directory-enabled applications will change the number of
indexed attributes, members of a property set and so on.
You have to be able to document your own Active Directory®
and that’s why we wrote this book.
We believe that LDP was written for geeks, nerds and the initiated and to
maximise its use, you need solid LDAP skills. This book comes to the rescue. It
provides a comprehensive guide to using LDP without having to be a master guru
in LDAP.
Who is this book for?
It is for anyone who wants to dig deep into the Active Directory®,
including:
-
System administrators
-
System architects
-
Support engineers
-
Programmers writing directory enabled applications
The book will aid you in solving complex administration tasks and Active
Directory® troubleshooting.
The book assumes that you are familiar with Active Directory®
concepts to a fairly advanced level. On our geekometer scale this book is
extreme!
A really important warning
If you use the ADSI Edit snap-in, the LDP utility or any other LDAP client and
incorrectly modify the Active Directory®
you could cause serious problems. This may cause you loss of data and require
you to reinstall the operating system and applications. It cannot be guaranteed
that problems resulting from the incorrect modification of the Active Directory®
can be solved. Make modifications at your own risk in a test environment before
applying them to any production system.
How to use this book
To gain full benefit from the book start at the beginning and work your way
through to the end. We strongly advise you to try out all the examples in a
test forest – our test environment is documented in Appendix A. If you choose
not to use our test forest naming conventions, you will need to modify the
examples as appropriate.
It is important that LDP is configured correctly and if you are unsuccessful at
any point refer to the section on setting the initial search conditions in
Chapter 5.
If you are:
-
In a hurry and need an introduction, start with Chapter 2 which introduces
Active Directory® objects
and attributes. After that, dip in and out as necessary, referring to the table
of contents and the index.
-
In need of further explanation, refer to the Active Directory®
Geek’s Reference in Chapter 3. You will find our ultimate reference to the key
objects, attributes and concepts.
-
If you are new to LDP, work through the LDP Primer in Chapter 4.
-
If you are trying to solve a particular problem, refer to the comprehensive
indexing.
Syntax and naming conventions
Where object and attribute names have been individually mentioned in the text,
they are italicised. The majority of names used are the LDAP display names as
these are the names you need when programmatically accessing the directory.
Feedback and comments
If you would like to contribute your feedback, comments or questions, please
contact us at comments@kimberry.co.uk.
Thank you for taking the time to buy this book and letting us know what you
think. If you have suggestions for future books, we would like to hear.
© 2003, John Craddock and Sally Storey
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