Active Directory Cookbook

Chapter 6. Users

Introduction

User accounts are one of the most frequently used types of objects in Active Directory. Because Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 systems manage users through Active Directory, many key issues that system administrators have to deal with are covered in this chapter. In particular, Active Directory manages all the information regarding passwords, group membership, the disabling or expiration of accounts, and when users have logged in.

The Anatomy of a User

The default location for user objects in a domain is the cn=Users container directly off the domain root. You can, of course, create user objects in other containers and organizational units in a domain. Table 6-1 contains a list of some of the interesting attributes that are available on user objects. This is by no means a complete list. There are many other informational attributes that I haven’t included.

Table 6-1. Attributes of user objects

Attribute	Description
accountExpires	Large integer representing when the user’s account is going to expire. See Recipe 6.25 for more information.
cn	Relative distinguished name of user objects. This is commonly the username of the user.
displayName	Typically the full name of a user. This attribute is used in administrative tools to display a user’s descriptive “name.”
givenName	First name of the user.
homeDirectory	Local or UNC path of user’s home directory. See Recipe 6.29 for more information.
homeDrive	Defines the drive letter to map the ...