international chars in attributes

[Goetz Golla <Goetz_Golla@genua.de>]

It has been noted several times on this list that in LDAP v3 attribute
values with special characters are stored UTF-8 and base64 encoded.

I have two questions about this:

(i) Whenever I have an ldif file with umlauts in it, I get the message:
ldap_add: Invalid syntax
        additional info: value contains invalid data

Is it possible to make openldap do the conversion from some international
charset to UTF-8/base64 itself, or do I have to do this manually before
submitting an ldif file ?

(ii) When I have an entry which is base64 encoded, I understand that the
client has to do the decoding itself.
When talking to an X.500 Server with an LDAP Port I can recognize the
encoded entries by two ':' after the attribute name, e.g.:

cn:: LKHSfoiawdkasnkasjhf==

  ^^

However, OpenLDAP does not seem to behave like that. Then, how can the
client know if it should decode the value, or not ?


=     Dr. Goetz Golla                   Internet: golla<at>genua.de   =
=     Gesellschaft fuer Netzwerk- und
=     Unix-Administation mbH
=     85551 Kirchheim b. Muenchen       Germany                       =