Continuing on from http://blog.davekoelmeyer.co.nz/2011/11/19/pam-ldaps-and-policykit-weirdness-in-ubuntu-10-04-x86/, the second problem I have encountered with my test LDAP how-to is when LDAP users attempt to use a Policykit enabled application and have their otherwise valid credentials rejected.

In OpenDJ, my LDAP accounts are assigned the gidNumber attribute value of 119, which would place them into the admin group on Ubuntu and consequently allow them to make use of sudo and other applications requiring elevated privileges. Works great, except when using an application such as Ubuntu Software Center which makes use of Policykit.

Note that this is encountered when LDAP authentication is carried out regardless of whether SSL (LDAPS) is configured or not, but if it is then you have the added bonus of the local administrator account not being able to authenticate either…

My bug report may be found at this link:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/policykit-1/+bug/892680

Regarding my how-tos on using LDAP as a naming service for Ubuntu clients here and here, I seem to have bumped my head against an unusual and obscure scenario where if LDAP authentication has been configured with SSL, authenticating to Policykit-enabled applications as local administrator appears to break.

This has the weird effect of valid administrator credentials being rejected by applications such as Ubuntu Software Center – even though the same credentials can be used to log in to the system, with sudo on the command line, and in other applications that don’t use Policykit such as Synaptic Package Manager.

I have filed a bug report at the following link for reference:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/policykit-1/+bug/892480