Re: managing OpenLDAP / back-config

[Michael Ströder <michael@stroeder.com>]

Howard Chu wrote:
> Tools that make certain commonplace tasks easier are certainly a good 
> thing. But when the tools get in the way, (e.g., FedoraDS where there 
> are even more bug reports about getting their admin server running than 
> for their actual directory server), the whole effort is just pointless.

Let's be fair. The admin server of the Netscape/SunONE/Fedora DS was 
meant to manage a whole family of servers (LDAP, WWW, Mail, Calendar) 
organized in administration domains. So it's a more complex concept. If 
you're solely using the directory server it might be overkill. I used 
web2ldap most of the times to configure their server directly because 
it's much faster than the fat Java stuff.

But I have to admit that it's easier to tweak things in cn=config of 
Netscape/SunONE DS with stock web2ldap than to manage back-config with 
it. The reason is that their config schema was designed from scratch 
utilizing separate object classes and attributes without preserving 
backward compability with old text-based config. This makes it possible 
for a DUA to almost do the right thing by just looking at the schema.

Ciao, Michael.