Question

Help with LDAP/AD query

Asked by: bruce_77

Hello,

We have two domains in our forest; domaina.company.com and domainb.company.com. Forest root is company.com

I have an application in DomainA that occasionally queries AD. Sometimes, it needs to queries objects in DomainB too.

When it queries DomainA, the search root is:

DC=domaina, dc=company, dc=com

Likewise, for for DomainB.

If I want to configure the application to search both domains without having to change the Search root, I guess I need to query a Global catalog server. But how do I do this? And what do I set the search root to?

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Asked On
2009-10-29 at 04:28:18ID24854177
Topics

Active Directory

,

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)

Participating Experts
4
Points
500
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: jfromanskiPosted on 2009-10-29 at 04:50:40ID: 25692572

dc=company, dc=com

 

by: xxdcmastPosted on 2009-10-29 at 05:10:10ID: 25692688

jfromanski has it. But let me just add a little bit more to this to help you understand. The search root is basically your starting point for your searches. The LDAP search will look in an any ous etc that appear under the search root. What you have just company com as the search root you can perform your search on both parts of your domain tree (more if you had domain c,d,etc).

When searching on DC=domaina, dc=company, dc=com your basically saying start here and ignore everything else above this level, eliminating domainb.

One piece of advice i can offer you is to download and install ADSI edit. This makes finding distinguished names of objects extremely easy.
http://www.computerperformance.co.uk/w2k3/utilities/adsi_edit.htm

 

by: bruce_77Posted on 2009-10-29 at 05:55:51ID: 25693054

Thanks guys..

Do I need to set the GC port and connect to a GC as well here? Or can I just connect to a normal DC?

 

by: bluntTonyPosted on 2009-10-29 at 05:59:48ID: 25693092

Hi there,

If the data you are querying does indeed exist in the GC, then your query can be:

GC://dc=domain,dc=com

As opposed to LDAP://... which will query a non-GC.

How are you implementing this query? IN ADUC, a script using ADSI?

 

by: bruce_77Posted on 2009-10-29 at 14:37:39ID: 25698519

Hi Tony

Ok, so if I was searching:

LDAP://dc=company,dc=com

Does that mean I am *only* searching the forest root domain and nothing else? Whereas GC://dc=company,dc=com means I am searching the Global Catalog?

is that how it works?

 

by: bluntTonyPosted on 2009-10-30 at 02:41:54ID: 25701354

Every GC holds partial replicas of all objects in the forest. A partial replica only holds certain attributes, so you cannot retrieve all information about a particular object by querying the GC. However you can query all objects.
So by querying GC://dc=domain,dc-local will query the entire forest for, but you may not be able to retrieve all the data you need if those attributes are not in the GC.
Is it a script your trying to write? If you let me know exactly what you're trying to achieve I may be able to help...

 

by: shabarinathPosted on 2009-10-30 at 05:31:17ID: 25702254

The best way is to query GC on port 3268. But still, if the application is not able to work without start root, it may be difficult.
You could try some other utility like dsquery, where it can work without search root and have an option included by for searching the entire forest.

dsquery * -filter cn=shaba forestroot

Thanks
Shaba

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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