I've an app called auth_conf which is used to define authentication.conf.
For example,
etc/apps/auth_conf/local/authentication.conf
[roleMap_LDAP_Authentication_IT]
admin = a001,a002
power = p001
However, sometimes, the roleMap is copied to etc/system/local/authentication.conf and the content like this.
etc/system/local/authentication.conf
[roleMap_LDAP_Authentication_IT]
admin = a001
power = p001
Remarks: I'm not using LDAP group, users are configured individually.
When you restart splunkd or run 'splunk reload auth', splunk will check each of the users from authentication.conf against LDAP server.
If all of the user exist in the server, then, it would leave it as is.
However, if there are some users which are missing from the LDAP server, it will remove that user from the roleMap and then the new copy will be written to etc/system/local/authentication.conf
From the log, you will see somthing like this.
03-10-2015 13:52:46.360 +0800 WARN AuthenticationManagerLDAP - strategy="ldap_user" The group="a002" was not found on the LDAP server, removing it from the role map
When you restart splunkd or run 'splunk reload auth', splunk will check each of the users from authentication.conf against LDAP server.
If all of the user exist in the server, then, it would leave it as is.
However, if there are some users which are missing from the LDAP server, it will remove that user from the roleMap and then the new copy will be written to etc/system/local/authentication.conf
From the log, you will see somthing like this.
03-10-2015 13:52:46.360 +0800 WARN AuthenticationManagerLDAP - strategy="ldap_user" The group="a002" was not found on the LDAP server, removing it from the role map
This behavior will be changed from 6.2.3 tentatively. A warning message will be logged instead.