[RESOLVED] LDAP Authentication Difficulties

[Scott MacMaster]

    Public Function Authenticate(ByVal username As String, ByVal password As String) As Boolean

        Dim path As String = "LDAP://dc=" + Environment.UserDomainName
        Dim domainAndUsername As String = username + "@" + Environment.UserDomainName
        Dim entry As DirectoryEntry = New DirectoryEntry(path, domainAndUsername, password)

        Try
            ' Bind to the native AdsObject to force authentication.
            Dim obj As Object = entry.NativeObject
            Dim search As DirectorySearcher = New DirectorySearcher(entry)
            search.Filter = "(SAMAccountName=" + username + ")"
            search.PropertiesToLoad.Add("cn")
            Dim result As SearchResult = search.FindOne()
            If result Is Nothing Then
                Return False
            End If
            ' Update the new path to the user in the directory
            path = result.Path
            Dim filterAttributeas As Object = result.Properties("cn")(0)
        Catch ex As Exception
            lblMessage.Text = "Error authenticating user. " + ex.Message
            Return False
        End Try

        Return True
    End Function

This worked perfectly on our dev server. However, when I copied it to our web server it didn't. It took me hours of playing before I finally got it to work. I had to change the first 2 lines to

Dim path As String = "LDAP://_butlernt1.bc3campus/dc=bc3campus"
Dim domainAndUsername As String = username + "@bc3campus"

My best guess is the web server isn't able to lookup domain info. I suppose hard coding the domain name isn't a big issue since that isn't likely to change. However, I would prefer not to hard code the dc since we have 4 domain controllers. I don't what authentication to fail if the dc I hard coded happens to go down. Also, we plan on replacing at least a couple of the domain controllers soon. I'd have to change this code when we do that.

Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do to get this to work without specifying the dc or domain name?


Thanks,
Scott