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Password Management
Password authentication on the NetManager is required for many services such as:
If the NetManager is stand-alone, passwords will be checked against the local password file. This is one-way encrypted text file (offering easy backup and restoration without allow passwords to be determined). If the password field in the file is empty, no password will be required (but many services will not allow login with a password being specified, e.g. imap, ftp.). Alternatively, the account can exist but with an invalid password field (just a *); this will not allow the user to log on at all unless they can be authenticated using a different method (e.g. see LDAP below).
NetManager passwords are changed by simply going to http://netmanager/pass/ from a webbrowser on your internal network. By default, if the NetManager is part of Active Directory, the password will be changed on Active Directory first and if this succeeds, then the new password will be forced on the NetManager. In this way, passwords are kept in sync between the two systems.
The behaviour of the password-changing page can be altered by going to Security > Passwords in webadmin (default Password Changing tab). Any combination of change on NetManager and change on Active Directory can be configured.
Alternatively, all passwords can be checked against Active Directory (technically LDAP) first. If this fails, it will fallback to the standard NetManager password check. This means that passwords can be changed using standard Windows mechanisms (such as Ctrl-Alt-Delete or through Active Directory Users and Computers). Note, this means that both the LDAP and NetManager passwords will work.
To enable LDAP authentication, go to 'Security > Passwords in webadmin and then choose the Authentication Method'' tab. You may alter the domain and directory servers to test against, by default they are the internal DNS domain and the server(s) configured when joining the domain.
