Directory enabled distribution
I would like to start a discussion on having potato be directory
enabled. Basically this means support for LDAP in packages.
Currently we have the ability to setup systems with LDAP based ns (ie,
passwd, account, hosts, aliases...NIS in a nutshell) and utilities to
utilize that. Pam_ldap enables authentication through the LDAP server
and nss_ldap enables lookups from native libc calls to the LDAP
server for hosts password info, group info, shadow info and more.
There is also a php3 module now that allows for direct access to an
LDAP server from scripts.
I am also working on are migration scripts that make it easy to enable
things like nsLDAP. Basically it works like ypconfig (NIS) to enable
master/slave servers and configure clients. There will also be admin
tools for setting up accounts in the LDAP server and accessing
information.
What I would like to see is other packages that have LDAP compile time
capability start packaging a seperate .deb. For example Exim has compile
time options to enable lookups though LDAP for alias and host information
(among other things). Something like an exim-ldap package would be very
nice to have.
One thing I would like to note is that there are 2 ldap packages in the
dist now. Umich-LDAP is the original LDAP implementation, it works
well, but the source has not been maintained in some years. The
OpenLDAP package which I maintain is under current development and is
going to implement LDAPv3 in the near future. So if you do package a
package that links to libldap, I suggest using this library.
If we can make this an additional goal for potato, we will be able to
mark ourselves the FIRST completely directory enabled distribution
(not just Linux either, all OS's), I don't think there are any other
systems that enable LDAP to this extent (NT 5 doesn't count, it's still
beta, plus their LDAP is "embraced and extentended").
Thanks,
Ben
--
----- -- - -------- --------- ---- ------- ----- - - --- --------
Ben Collins <b.m.collins@larc.nasa.gov> Debian GNU/Linux
OpenLDAP Core - bcollins@openldap.org bcollins@debian.org
UnixGroup Admin - Jordan Systems The Choice of the GNU Generation
------ -- ----- - - ------- ------- -- ---- - -------- - --- ---- - --
Reply to: