LDAP System Administration

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 308 pages
• Published by: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
• Edition: 1st Edition March 20, 2003
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1565924916
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1565924918
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.8 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 14.4 ounces

Product Description
Be more productive and make your life easier. That's what "LDAP System Administration" is all about.

System administrators often spend a great deal of time managing configuration information located on many different machines: usernames, passwords, printer configurations, email client configurations, and network filesystem configurations, to name a few. LDAPv3 provides tools for centralizing all of the configuration information and placing it under your control. Rather than maintaining several administrative databases (NIS, Active Directory, Samba, and NFS configuration files), you can make changes in only one place and have all your systems immediately "see" the updated information.

Practically platform independent, this book uses the widely available, open source OpenLDAP 2 directory server as a premise for examples, showing you how to use it to help you manage your configuration information effectively and securely. OpenLDAP 2 ships with most Linux(R) distributions and Mac OS(R) X, and can be easily downloaded for most Unix-based systems. After introducing the workings of a directory service and the LDAP protocol, all aspects of building and installing OpenLDAP, plus key ancillary packages like SASL and OpenSSL, this book discusses:

Configuration and access control

Distributed directories; replication and referral

Using OpenLDAP to replace NIS

Using OpenLDAP to manage email configurations

Using LDAP for abstraction with FTP and HTTP servers, Samba, and Radius

Interoperating with different LDAP servers, including Active Directory

Programming using Net:: LDAP

If you want to be a master of your domain, "LDAP System Administration" will help you get upand running quickly regardless of which LDAP version you use. After reading this book, even with no previous LDAP experience, you'll be able to integrate a directory server into essential network services such as mail, DNS, HTTP, and SMB/CIFS.

Reader Reviews
The book starts with a section on a brief introduction of LDAP before moving in LDAPv3 overview. OpenLDAP takes two chapters, then a section of chapters on Application Integration. Letting LDAP replace NIS, integrating with email, Unix and LDAP, LDAP interoperability and LDAP and Perl finish the chapters off. There are some appendixes that include some of the common Attributes and Objects also. If you are using Windows and some LDAP application this book does not contain a lot of information for you specific to the OS, but is a great reference for LDAP overall. Most of the code examples rely on Unix understandings. The review of access and OpenLDAP applies directly to numerous systems in understanding how rights are applied. Replication and referrals is a great topic that is covered well for the beginner. For someone wanting advanced architecture ideas and designs, this chapter does not go deep enough for you. But I enjoyed it still letting me review and pick up a few items I was unaware of. LDAP administrators that are just starting out, or even ones that have been doing LDAP for some time and need to secure or expand the directory infrastructure could benefit from this book.