Hi,

but still, I am confused about the difference a simple ntlm_auth as an authentication method used by winbind, and a 'direct' winbind authentication (from a freeradius point of view)!

the old legacy method uses ntlm_auth as an extrenal program to do authentication the native/direct winbind method uses the winbind libraries so that authentication is done directly by FreeRADIUS, using a winbind connection pool (just like SQL,LDAP etc) and not calling/spawning an external program. result is much much faster authentications and better scaling. your FR will need to be latest version compiled against recent SAMBA correctly. unlikely that such a packge will come from your distro providers right now alan