Re: Alias dereferencing

[Pierangelo Masarati <ando@sys-net.it>]

Michael Reiher wrote:

> Hi
>
> I have a question regarding the way aliases are resolved. What I found from 
> trying and looking at the code is that, when doing an ldapsearch on some dn:
>
> - dereferencing of all subtree entries, which are aliases, works as expected 
> when searching (using -a always)
> - it even dereferences recursively when an alias points to another alias
> - it also dereferences the base correctly in case the last part is an alias
>  (e.g. dn: ou=alias,ou=entry,dc=de)
>
> But what it apparently doesn't do is transparently resolving base DNs, which 
> contain aliases at other places, like dn: ou=entry2,ou=alias,ou=entry1,dc=de.
> However that's what I'd need. 
>
> If I see it right, the entire DN is looked up in the database, but of course 
> not found. Found is only the part up to the alias (i.e. 
> ou=alias,ou=entry1,dc=de). And it doesn't retry from there, by resolving that 
> matching part (suppose it points to ou=from_alias_resolved_entry,dc=de) and 
> retry with it resolved (i.e. ou=entry2,ou=from_alias_resolved_entry,dc=de).
>
> The other issue is, that it also doesn't seem possible to resolve aliases 
> pointing at entries in a different backend (We use different DBs for 
> different suffixes). The resolving code seems to operate only within the same 
> backend.
>
> Am I just missing something,
Apparently, yes:
<draft-ietf-ldapbis-models, section 2.6>
     An alias entry shall have no subordinates, so that an alias entry
     is always a leaf entry.
</draft-ietf-ldapbis-models, section 2.6>
p.

> or are these things really not possible? If so, 
> why? Is it defined this way by some spec? Or it just not implemented? Is 
> there anything planned (or maybe even in CVS already)?
>
> I'm using OpenLDAP 2.3.4, with BDB backends.
>
> Any help appreciated.
>
> Greetings
>
> Michael
>  



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