> Can someone clarify whether the above is 'normal' or not? I'm begining > to think they are encoded in some way, however why would gq render them > in plaintext, yet slapcat and ldapsearch render them in this way? What > does the double colon signify? Perhaps the NSD LDIF isn't as corrupt as > we thought? Yes, this is normal. It indicates the value is base64 (?) encoded.