[active-directory] Finding CN of users in Active Directory

I'm trying to find the Base DN of the user that can access or controls all the users in Active Directory so I can put it in my LDAP.

Usually someone will give me this, and it looks like DC=domain,DC=company,DC=com

But the admin is not available, so I don't know how to find this in Active Directory.

I'm looking for a step by step to find this info. Which tree and tabs to open and how to construct it. My user is: admin, the server is: controller-16.domain.company.com But I don't know if they added OU or groups or something else

I know that this:

CN=admin,DC=domain,DC=company,DC=com

does not work. Nor does:

DC=domain,DC=company,DC=com

If the Base DN works on Gawor's LDAP Browser, then it will work for my LDAP.

This question is related to active-directory ldap distinguishedname

The answer is


CN refers to class name, so put in your LDAP query CN=Users. Should work.


Most common AD default design is to have a container, cn=users just after the root of the domain. Thus a DN might be:

cn=admin,cn=users,DC=domain,DC=company,DC=com

Also, you might have sufficient rights in an LDAP bind to connect anonymously, and query for (cn=admin). If so, you should get the full DN back in that query.