[CentOS] LDAP howto using ds-base and ds-admin and related consoles

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 1:03 PM, Rob Kampen<rkampen at kampensonline.com> wrote:
[snip]
> I have read many hundreds of pages, have purchased O'reilly's LDAP System
> Administration but cannot seem to get my dirsrv based LDAP to function.
> I do understand that ds uses LDIF files to store and set things up, but seem
> unable to grasp the arcane entries that need to exist so I can access it
> with a basic LDAP client to load my users etc.
> Also I guess there are certain schemas that need to be used to allow basic
> functions to work.
> My wish list:
> linux user authentication and authorization
> windows user authentication and authorization (via samba?)
> customer contact list (name, address, company, phone numbers, email
> addresses)
> - this last one to be used by Thunderbird and my SIP phone system - both of
> which profess to speak LDAP
> I'm sure there are many small business folk that would like something like
> this, however I cannot find a template with all my searches, so for those of
> you with better LDAP and or google skills - please point me in the right
> direction.


There's a pretty straightforward guide at HowToForge.com (search for
"CentOS LDAP"). It's a little dated, but works as advertised.  In a
nutshell the installation requires installing the centos-ds packages
(about 4), installing a Sun Java, and then populating the database.
The client side is even simpler.

Linux and Windows user authentication is straightforward, with GUI
based setup and editing.

The default schema I use doesn't include address, company, etc., but
these are very easily added.  I tested with kaddressbook and a couple
other LDAP browsers without any glitches.