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nss-ldapd init script sequence number



Hi, I maintain nss-ldapd, a replacement for nss_ldap which uses a local
daemon (nslcd) to proxy name lookup requests (passwd/group/hosts/etc)
to an LDAP server. I have received a bug report (#475626) that I would
welcome some input on.

The problem is that a lot of daemons are started at sequence 20
(/etc/rc2.d/S20...) an may want to do name lookups (e.g. exim is
mentioned in the bugreport). This means that nslcd should probably be
started before sequence 20. However, slapd is started at sequence 19
and it would be best to start nslcd after slapd. Currently nslcd is
started at sequence 20.

The problem with starting nslcd before slapd is that slapd does name
lookups during startup which slow down slapd startup by about 5 seconds
(because slapd is not ready to handle lookups yet) and leaves nslcd in a
state where it believes the LDAP server is unreachable and will only
retry after some timeout has expired. This could in turn cause failed
lookups for processes that do name lookups just after slapd has been
started.

So, what would the best solution for this problem?

- request slapd to be started at sequence 18 and start nslcd at
  sequence 19 when this has changed (haven't extensively checked if that
  would cause problems for slapd)
- add some magic to nslcd to do more retries during startup and handle
  this case especially
- something else??

This also brings up the problem with what to do with existing
installations. If I understand correctly changing the parameter to
update-rc.d will not change any existing symlinks so any changes that
are made now will only affect existing installations.

Feedback is very much appreciated (also other feedback related to
nss-ldapd). Thanks.

-- 
-- arthur - adejong@debian.org - http://people.debian.org/~adejong --

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