> I would offer to contribute to the documentation, but due to its lack of usefulness, do not have an understanding of the basic concepts myself. The best I would be able to do is describe my experience and provide the steps that I followed to get a basic installation working.
>
> Hopefully someone can volunteer the time to test the documentation, in the same way a new user would!
>
Hi Tom,
Thanks for this feedback. You're more than welcome to suggest a table of contents for a quick start guide patch based on your journey.
For example, what would have been best to know first? Some quick wins for the user? The problem is that there is no "one way" to do things. In the Perl would this is called TIMTOWTDI.
Getting into the LDAP protocol, Directory Server topology design, deployment, management, DIT design, replication, monitoring, security for authorization and authentication is not something you just rock up and do. OpenLDAP is a journey consisting of research, testing and understanding.
It took me a long time back in 2004 to get my Linux box to authenticate and authorise my login on a Red Hat Linux box, but what a feeling! In 12 years I've not even scratched the flexible surface of the OpenLDAP project family software suite.
It's the same for any open source project. To do things properly and perfect takes time. "Good enough" comes back to get you.
What would you have like to see? If your ideal documentation was there would you have just copied and pasted and moved on?
So, in the words of Jerry, "Help me, help you" .
Thanks,
Gavin.