-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Inaba [mailto:min...@nyx.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2011 1:23 PM
To: 'perl-l...@perl.org'
Subject: basic question about binding without knowing the DN

hello perl-ldap mailing list,

i'm wondering if i'm trying to do the impossible, even though it seems like this might be a common situation.
i'm trying to verify a user/password by having the user bind to an ldap server. the problem is that just given a username, i can't guess the DN because the DN's components have values that could be many things:
example:
CN=mark,OU=paris,OU=short,...,DC=partA,DC=foo,DC=com
CN=mike,OU=new york,OU=tall,...,DC=partB,DC=foo,DC=com

it seems that all of this is necessary for me to bind (i can't just use CN=mark,DC=foo,DC=com and try a password against all matches sigh)
so if i get another user, i don't know what sort of OU values his/her DN will have. also, the DC's might be different too.

here's the wrinkles that make it harder:
1) anon bind is turned off, so i can't search around for promising matches and use their DN
2) they don't want a generic 'read' account to log in because they don't want the password in a file.
     but i might be ok if:
     a) though if script is not called by user i might be able to convince them to use o-r.
     b) if the final server is sasl aware, i might be able to use an encrypted string in the script

but here's why i think it MIGHT be possible... using the windows program: ldap.exe
i noticed that i'm able to bind filling in only the fields:
USER: mark
PASSWORD: mypassword
DOMAIN: parta.foo.com

so unless the application knows some secret settings...how does it authenticate me without my telling it my full DN?
if i new that i think i could write my perl script that checks every user against
DOMAIN: parta.foo.com and partb.foo.com

thanks for any help :)
-mark (not in paris...alas..)
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