Thanks all.. I have read the man of ldif.... your advice has gotten me quite far both in my current implementation and in my overall understanding of LDAP which I am hoping grows with each passing day. In my attempt to build my current directory, I have taken a dump of my last successful implementation (which was created on FreeBSD 8.1) and substituted values for the dc=company and dc=com values with the correct ones for the current directory (attempting to implement under CentOS 5.4) and even tho the correct schemas are in place it is choking on this entry: # defaults, sudoers, Services, acadaca.com dn: cn=defaults,ou=sudoers,ou=Services,dc=acadaca,dc=net objectClass: top objectClass: sudoRole cn: defaults description: Default sudoOption's go here And again I should have all the schemas in place to make this work... include /etc/openldap/schema/core.schema include /etc/openldap/schema/cosine.schema include /etc/openldap/schema/inetorgperson.schema include /etc/openldap/schema/nis.schema include /etc/openldap/schema/misc.schema inlcude /etc/openldap/schema/sudoers.schema include /etc/openldap/schema/openldap.schema [root at ldap ldif]# ldapadd -h ldap -a -w secret -x -D "cn=Manager,dc=acadaca,dc=net" -f /home/tim/txt/ldif/acadaca-master.ldif adding new entry "cn=defaults,ou=sudoers,ou=Services,dc=acadaca,dc=net" ldapadd: Invalid syntax (21) additional info: objectClass: value #1 invalid per syntax Why this ldif will work in one directory but not another is a mystery at this point.. thanks again -- Here's my RSA Public key: gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 5A4873A9 Share and enjoy!!