Thread:Extension talk:LDAP Authentication/Issue with groups and preferences/reply

You're right that the problem is no entries.

In my configuration I have "samAccountName" instead of "SamAccountName" ... maybe the capitalisation makes a difference.

And I think this bit is wrong:

$wgLDAPSearchAttributes = array( "" => "SamAccountName" );

It should be

$wgLDAPSearchAttributes = array( "my.domain.parent.local" => "samAccountName" );

(No angle brackets).

As far as the number of users, I'm using an AD installation that has tens of thousands of accounts and responses always come back in under half a second. A properly configured system shouldn't have a problem timing out with 9700 users.