Failed Active Directory (AD) authentication - LDAP search failed, error 1 (Operations error)

  • 7021021
  • 23-Jun-2017
  • 25-Oct-2017

Environment

NetIQ Privileged Account Manager 3.2
NetIQ Privileged Account Manager 3.1

Situation

Authentication fails when the ldap Account Domain's Base DN is set at the root, domain or DC context (DC=My,DC=Lab), but works when configured to some OU or Container within that domain (CN=Users,DC=My,DC=Lab).

ldap search requests fail against an Active Directory (AD) server if it contains the root domain as BaseDN with scope as Subtree.

The following error appears in the unifid.log:
Warning, LDAP search failed, error 1 (Operations error)

Resolution

As an initial step, please verify the ldap Account Domain's search Scope has been set to Subtree so that a deep search occurs that includes all child objects as well as the base object.

Otherwise, a fix will be needed to configure the appropriate PAM ldap client options. At the time of writing this document, a public fix has been made available in the following releases or later:
PAM 3.1.0.3 - https://download.microfocus.com/Download?buildid=MtsbTyzebZw~
PAM 3.2.0.1 - https://download.microfocus.com/Download?buildid=IkXR5VRKYkQ~

Cause

With Active Directory (AD), if the root domain / child root domain is the set as the baseDN and the scope is subtree then it fails with an ldap 'Operations error'. This happens only if the client has the ldap option set for referrals. It works if unset. PAM has this by default set, so a fix will have this unset.

Status

Reported to Engineering