Re: Migrating openldap db backend from ibdm to bdb

[Tony Earnshaw <tonni@hetnet.nl>]

Hallvard B Furuseth wrote, on 26. feb 2007 20:19:

[...]

> Is there something particular which makes this more so for OpenLDAP than
> other packages, or are OpenLDAP releases more buggy than other packages,
> or are existing bugs more likely to be fatal, or...?
>
> I had the impression that this was mostly a RedHat issue.  But if it's
> more general, it sounds like the only likely fix would be in OpenLDAP
> or the release methods or something.

I guess I was born cynical; Red Hat always (through many years) had a 
lousy record of supporting OpenLDAP, whilst its support of stuff like 
Apache and MySQL has always been impeccable. Not only these packages, 
but the OS as a whole has been supported and maintained (with or without 
back porting) in a manner that I as a SysV and Red Hat aficionado would 
find it difficult (but not impossible) to leave for any competitor. One 
asks oneself what, for example, Centos will do in the circumstances.

Lately Red Hat has adopted (bought) it's own directory services from 
Netscape/Sun. Looking at Red Hat's service support conditions (available 
for anyone on the net), I see that Red Hat (nothing like repeating the 
name for cognizance) wishes to charge around $17,000 per site for 
support of its own directory services. I don't see any motive for 
continued Red Hat OpenLDAP support there. Red Hat's pecuniary philosophy 
is fast becoming a superset of Microsoft's.

My own experience over the last three years has been, that (latterly 
with Buchan Milne's continually updated Red Hat specs/srpms), I can 
probably do a far better job of supporting directory services using 
OpenLDAP on Red Hat and Fedora bases than Red Hat can using its own 
stuff; certainly for far less money. OpenLDAP is a crucial component of 
all Red Hat sites I have anything to do with.

--Tonni

--
Tony Earnshaw
Email: tonni at hetnet dot nl