Re: Why is back-shell deprecated?

[Howard Chu <hyc@symas.com>]

johan.jonemo@hep.lu.se wrote:
> Are there any fatal flaws with back-shell? If so: Is it inherent in the
> solution or could it be amended?
>   

There is one serious problem with back-shell: it uses fork/exec to 
invoke the external scripts and fork behavior in a threaded program is 
generally undefined. That's why you're required to configure without 
threads if you want to use it. Since so much of slapd assumes the use of 
threads now, that makes the current back-shell rather a pain. Search the 
openldap-devel mailing list archive if you want more context on this, 
it's been discussed at length along with potential workarounds.

The other problem of course is that it communicates with plain LDIF, 
which is pretty inefficient. Still, that's probably the only choice for 
sending data to a shell script.

Once again, I suggest you review the back-sock code that was submitted.

--
 -- Howard Chu
 Chief Architect, Symas Corp.  http://www.symas.com
 Director, Highland Sun        http://highlandsun.com/hyc
 OpenLDAP Core Team            http://www.openldap.org/project/