ldap authentication (?)

[Sunil Ghelani <ghelani@cs.umn.edu>]

hi,
i was wondering how to use the openldap package with authentication
provision.if we want to perform ldapadd,ldapsearch operations,etc without
binding as the rootdn and rootpasswd; how do we give the password of a
regular user who wants to bind himself.
how does the server know what password file to use to verify the
correctness of the password.what is the format of this password file.

any help on this will be appreciated !
sunil ghelani