Re: Olc deployment vs slapd.conf based deployment

[Howard Chu <hyc@symas.com>]

Radovan Semancik wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The "cn=config" configuration method is clearly superior. However, there are 
> serious practical issues. Firstly, the documentation leaves a lot to be 
> desired. Until recently almost all examples shown the slapd.conf way, 
> cn=config equivalent was simply missing. Unless I have missed something most 
> manual pages still assume the slapd.conf configuration method. And so on.

These perennial arguments keep coming up. If you want things to improve, 
contribute. Anyone can write a manpage. Hardly anyone ever does. Everyone sits 
back and moans while waiting for someone else to fix things for them. That's 
not what open source projects and communities are about.

> Secondly, there are operations that simply cannot be done using ldpamodify in 
> cn=config (e.g. removal of a suffix database). And thirdly and most 
> importantly: it is a real pain to remember the configuration schema and write 
> a multi-line ldapmodify command-line even for simple operations.

In most cases you don't need to write multi-line ldapmodify commands. That's 
what ordering prefixes are for.

> Especially 
> given that you have to translate suffix names (dc=example,dc=com) to 
> configuration DNs (olcDatabase={1}mdb,cn=config), set up non-trivial 
> configuration (e.g. replication) and so on. The cn=config method may be 
> superior. But it is not user friendly. Not even close.
>
> But, OpenLDAP is an open source project. If there is something that a user 
> does not like then there is always something that can be done about it. For 
> example, I like cn=config, but I hate the lack of tooling. Therefore I have 
> created the missing tools:
>
> https://github.com/Evolveum/slapdconf

Again, if you want the project to improve - contribute. 3rd party tooling 
dilutes the knowledge pool. If you think you've improved some aspect of the 
code, contribute it back to the Project.

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