1 This is the textual form of the GOsa FAQ. Online information with
2 comments is set up at Wiki: http://oss.gonicus.de/gosa/.
4 Q: When creating many users for one department, I need to fill some
5 fields again and again. Is there a shortcut for that?
7 A: Just create a user template and pre-fill all values you need. You
8 can use dynamic content, too: uid, sn and givenName will be replaced.
9 i.E. an entry '/home/%uid' in homeDirectory will be replaced by the
10 real uid of the user you're creating, %sn.%givenName@yourdomain.com
11 creates proper email addresses, etc. Templates include group membership.
14 Q: Can GOsa execute commands after creating/editing/removing users,
15 departments, etc.
17 A: Yes. Edit /etc/gosa/gosa.conf's menu section. Each plugin may have
18 an entry "postremove", "postmodify" and "postcreate". You can use
19 ldap attributes as command line options.
20 i.E. postcreate="/usr/bin/sudo /usr/local/sbin/ftp.setperms %uid '%givenName'"
23 Q: I'd like to modify the look of GOsa to fit our CI. How can I create an
24 own theme?
26 A: Themes are splitted into two parts. ihtml/ contains templates which
27 generate the ui, html/ contains all parts that must be readable from
28 clients. GOsa first looks for predefined files in the directory indirectly
29 defined via the "theme" parameter in /etc/gosa/gosa.conf. If it can't
30 find them here, it'll use the default one.
32 So start over by copying html/themes/default to html/themes/yourtheme
33 and ihtml/themes/default to ihtml/themes/yourtheme. Change gosa.conf to
34 contain theme="yourtheme" in section main. Here are some files to edit:
36 * login.tpl -> login screen
37 * framework.tpl -> page contents
38 * style.css -> stylesheets used by GOsa
40 In fact, the rest of the UI is not converted to smarty, yet. Please be
41 patient.
44 Q: How can I let a person do administrative tasks under a specific department?
46 A: Create a group inside this department. Put all administrative people inside,
47 go to the "ACL" tab and check all fields these users should be able to adminstrate.
50 Q: How can I permit users to change some of their own attributes?
52 A: Same like the point above, but this rule only works for users own attributes
53 by checking the box on the acl page.
56 Q: What about applications?
58 A: GOsa can manage desktop applications in ldap. Create a group and put all users
59 in there, which have common desktop settings. Go to the "Application" tab and
60 add all applications common to this group. Applications can be created from the
61 application plugin.
62 The idea behind this feature is a script running on the terminal-servers/
63 workstation which check for applications on login (or on a regular basis using
64 timestamps). This one will create the corresponding icons on your KDE or GNOME
65 desktop.
68 Q: What's this terminal stuff?
70 A: GOto is - similar to LTSP - a ldap based diskless client system. It is available
71 from our projects page.
74 Q: I can't select any mailservers. What's wrong?
76 A: LDAP stores information about all your servers. The server plugin is not ready
77 yet, so you've to adjust/add these entries using your favorite ldap tool.
80 Q: GOsa is not in my native language, can I translate it to my language?
82 A: Yes. Just go to the locale directory and copy the messages.po file somewhere
83 else. Edit the copy and put your translations into the msgstr lines. To be
84 included in next GOsa releases, you may want to send it to the GOsa maintainer.
85 Finally you need to create a directory with your language code. (i.e. de for
86 german) containing the LC_MESSAGES directory. Move your messages.po file there
87 and run 'msgfmt messages.po' in that directory. That's it.
89 You may need to restart apache, depending on your setup. On Debian, be sure
90 to have your locale generated (dpkg-reconfigure locales) before.
92 Q: The online help doesn't exist in my language, can i translate it to my language?
94 A: Yes. Just go to the doc/guide/user/en directory and copy the lyx-source directory
95 to a new directory in doc/guide/user/<your language>. You have to use the lyx
96 program create the online help in your language. When you have finish just run
97 ./gen_online_help from the gosa root directory to generate the online docs.
99 Q: Can I specify some kind of password policies?
101 A: You can place the keywords "pwminlen" and "pwdiffer" in the main section of your
102 gosa.conf. "pwminlen" specifies how many characters a password must have to be
103 accepted. "pwdiffer" contains the number of characters that must be different
104 from the previous password.
106 Note that these only affect passwords that are set by the user, not by the admins.
109 Q: I've to update passwords on external windows PDCs. Can I add a command to let
110 synchronize these for me?
112 A: There's the possibility to add a password hook in gosa.conf's main section using
113 the keyword "externalpwdhook". The specified command will be executed with
114 three parameters: /path/to/your/script username oldpassword newpassword
116 So you can call i.e. smbpasswd to handle your password change on the PDC.
119 Q: What about templates for vacation messages?
121 A: Create a directory to keep a set of vacation messages which are readable by the
122 user that runs your apache. In this example I'll use /etc/gosa/vacation for that.
124 Put your vacation files in there containing a "DESC:some descriptive text" as the
125 first line followed by the normal vacation text. You can use all attributes from
126 the generic tab. I.e.:
128 /etc/gosa/vacation/business.txt ------------------------------------------------->8
129 DESC:Away from desk
130 Hi, I'm currently away from my desk. You can contact me on
131 my cell phone via %mobile.
133 Greetings,
134 %givenName %sn
135 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
137 Place the config option vacationdir="/etc/gosa/vacation" in the location found in
138 gosa.conf and a template box is show in the vacation mail tab.
141 Q: How can I generate automatic ID's for user templates?
143 A: Add an entry describing your id policy in gosa.conf, location section:
145 a) using attributes
146 You can specify LDAP attributes (currently only sn and givenName) in braces {}
147 and add a percent sign befor it. Optionally you can strip it down to a number
148 of characters, specified in []. I.e.
150 idgen="{%sn}-{%givenName[2-4]}"
152 will generate an ID using the full surename, adding a dash, and adding at least
153 the first two characters of givenName. If this ID is used, it'll use up to four
154 characters. If no automatic generation is possible, a input box is shown.
156 b) using automatic id's
157 I.e. specifying
159 idgen="acct{id:3}"
161 will generate a three digits id with the next free entry appended to "acct".
163 idgen="ext{id#3}"
165 will generate a three digits random number appended to "ext".
168 Q: I'm migrating from the current LDAP, now GOsa does not allow uid's and group
169 with upper/lower case and spaces. What can I do?
171 A: Include the strict="no" keyword in your gosa.conf's location section.
172 WARNING: using strict="no" will cause problems with cyrus/postfix!!
175 Q: I'd like to place my users under ou=staff, not under ou=people. Can I change
176 this?
178 A: Yes. You can change the people and group locations by adding the following
179 statements to your location sections:
181 people="ou=staff"
182 groups="ou=crowds"
184 After logging in again, people and groups are created in the configured places.
185 As a side note, you can leave these strings blank for flat structures, too.
188 Q: I've problems with many objectClass violations/undefined attributes. Can GOsa
189 check what's missing?
191 A: Yes. Move away your gosa.conf and go to the GOsa setup. Follow the steps till
192 you can download the config. If you get up to this point, your schema is ok...
195 Q: I really don't want dn's containing the CN for user accounts because I don't
196 want to support anonymous binds for uid resolution. Is it possible to have dn's
197 containing the uid instead?
199 A: Yes. Placing the dnmode="uid" keyword in your gosa.conf's location section will
200 solve your problem.
203 Q: Hey, I've installed GOsa, but it claims something about "SID and / or RIDBASE
204 are missing in your configuration". What's wrong?
206 A: You've configured GOsa to use samba3, but your LDAP has no samba domain object
207 inside. Either log into samba for the first time to let it create that object,
208 or supply the sid and ridbase for your domain in your gosa.conf's location, i.e.:
210 <location name=...>
211 ...
212 ridbase="1000"
213 sid="0-815-4711" \>
215 Remember to fill in your real domain sid which is retrievable by the command
216 "net getlocalsid".
219 Q: We have massive performance problems with using samba as a member server.
221 A: This is a known issue. We're working around this by putting
223 <location name=...>
224 ...
225 sambaidmapping="true"
226 ... \>
228 into the configuration. GOsa will write the additional objectClass sambaIdmapEntry
229 to the group and user objects.
232 Q: I get 'The value specified as GID/UID number is too small' when forcing IDs. Why?
234 A: This is an additional security feature, so that no one can fall back to uid 0. The
235 default minimum ID is 100. You can set it to every value you like by specifying
237 <location name=...>
238 ...
239 minid="40"
240 ... \>
242 in your configuration. In this example 40 will be the smallest ID you can enter.
245 Q: Aahhrg. I've updated to a new version and my gosa.conf seems to be broken.
247 A: Some parameters have changed. Please call the fix_config.sh script which is in
248 the contrib directory.
251 Q: I've saved my windows workstations in other locations like GOsa is doing it
252 for decades. Is there a way to change this?
254 A: Yes. Use the winstation parameter in your location section:
256 <location name=...>
257 ...
258 winstations="ou=machineaccounts"
259 ... \>
262 Q: GOsa doesn't seem to follow my referrals. What can I do?
264 A: Place the option 'recursive = "true"' inside your locations definition
265 and you should be fine.
268 Q: I'd like to have TLS based LDAP connections from within GOsa. Is this possible?
270 A: Yes, add
272 <main ...>
273 ...
274 tls="true"
275 ... \>
277 to the main section of GOsa. This switch affects all LDAP connections.
280 Q: Cyrus folder get created in the style user.username. I prefer the unix hirachy
281 style user/username. Is it possible to change this?
283 A: Yes, add
285 <main ...>
286 ...
287 cyrusunixstyle="true"
288 ... \>
290 to the main section of GOsa and the folders are created in unix style.
293 Q: I'd like to do special checks for several plugin parameters. How can I modify
294 GOsa to take care of these checks?
296 A: No need to modify anything. Just add a hook the the plugin you'd like to
297 check:
299 check="/your/command/binary"
301 This binary will get an ldif to STDIN for analysis and may write an error message
302 to STDOUT. Note, that the supplied ldif may NOT be the original target ldif due
303 to technical reasons.
306 Q: Is there a way to use ACL independet filtering when using administrative units?
308 A: Yes. Set STRICT_UNITS to "true" in your gosa.conf's location section.
311 Q: How can i active the account expiration code for the gosa interface?
313 A: Yes. Just set "account_expiration" to "true" in your gosa.conf's main section.
316 Q: How can i activate the object snapshot functionality?
318 A: Add these lines in the main section of your gosa.conf
319 enable_snapshot ="true"
320 snapshot_base ="ou=snapshots,dc=server,dc=de"
323 Q: How can i store object snapshots on another server?
325 A: Just add these lines in the main section of your gosa conf
327 snapshot_ldap_base ="dc=server,dc=de"
328 snapshot_user ="cn=ldapadmin,dc=server,dc=de"
329 snapshot_password ="password"
330 snapshot_server ="ldap://server:389"