How does Ranger Accounts Server work?

Question

How does Ranger Accounts Server work?

Symptoms

N/A

Resolution

Instructions

It is designed to work via TCP/IP messaging and utilises the advanced communication's system used by LAN Ranger. Since STARTUP shortcuts are no longer necessary, clients on NT/2000 server networks no longer HAVE to be correctly configured to use Microsoft system policies.

How it works...


When a user logs on, a message is sent to the Ranger Accounts Server (running on a Domain controller server) requesting a username/group lookup. Since the Accounts Server is running on a domain controller and has access to the accounts database, it queries and gets a list of a user's global group membership. This list is then compared against the groups configured in the RangerAdmin group priority list (more). The highest matching group is then returned to the client machine, which subsequently applies that group's Ranger security.

After this process, the Accounts Server dialog increments its counter of "requests processed". This is a good method of checking whether the Accounts server is receiving inbound account lookup requests.

If no matching group is found, then a log is written to the application Event log. This message reports the user's group membership for debugging purposes.

If the "requests processed" counter is not incrementing, then it may suggest an underlying problem with the TCP/IP connectivity between client and server (more).

The group priority used by Account Server is stored in the Groups2.pri file. This is stored in the server's Ranger directory and is a editable text file. NB: This file should not be modified manually. It is rewritten each time RangerAdmin settings are applied. If the file's "modified" timestamp changes, Ranger Server will reload its data. This should happen immediately.

Configuration settings in this file are also read when the Ranger Server services are started.