LDAP replications for dummies ;)

[Antuan Avdioukhine <antuan@cplus.ru>]

Greetengs.

About two years ago I theoreticaly learned with docs and this forum, but
had no practice at all. Now I have to resolv some problems with OpenLDAP
in a rush, and, unforunatelly, I have no much time to search archives
and documentation and make experimental works. So I will be very
greatfull if you share your experience. URLs for FAQs and examples are
welcome.

So. We have an e-mail MTA distributed system based on sendmail, courier
imap, and OpenLDAP as user database and authentication backend. Our
ex-sysadmin installed master LDAP and two slave OL-servers on relays,
using SLURP technique. I beleive that it is not right choice, so I want
to migrate replication scheme to better one. So some questions I have
for now.

1. I know SLURP and LDAP sync techniques, is there another ones? 

2. LDAP sync looks for me much better than SLURP. Is there any "compare
chart" or "best practice" tips which helps to choose right way?

3. Is there any version restrictions for replications schemes? E.g. if I
setup new OpenLDAP server have I install exactly same version as other
LDAP servers?

4. Some days ago my master LDAP was dead for good, so I'd changed
software configuration and now it uses one of my ex-slaves. It works fine
but as a result I lost backup LDAP server -- now my slaves out of sync.
I guess that the simplest way is setup another OpenLDAP, copy base and
make it master ldap server using SLURP. But if sync scheme better than
SLURP I prefer to setup LDAP sync scheme. So if I choose sync, I want to
make my today's master 'provider' and stand-alone-today-ex-slave
'consumer'. Am I right? 

5. Can I perform any setup steps but setup consumer to syncronize my
LDAPs?



-- 
Antuan Avdioukhine (DEKA-RIPE).
Convey Plus Telecommunications
St.Petersburg, Russia.