The ABCs of LDAP: How to Install, Run, and Administer LDAP Services

Most commercial products are shipped with administration tools. Open source products, however, are not. You have to administer the software and configure the product by hand and use command line tools such as ldapmodify. Fortunately, libraries exist with a large number of programming languages that enable you to put together the tools you need for everyday adminstration activities using your favorite programming language. However, you can also review what is already available. Following are a few products you can use:

• Commercial products for LDAP administration are the Softerra LDAP administrator and Softerra LDAP Browser: both are available at http://www.ldapadministrator.com.

• LDAP Browser/Editor written in Java by Jarek Gawor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. You can find the latest version at http://www.iit.edu/~gawojar/ldap.

• A good GUI written in Python is web2ldap. The author is Michael Stroeder. You can ge the software together with Installation and Configuration instructions from http://www.huff.ca/doc/web2ldap/web2ldap.html. At the time of this writing, this tool can be used with LDAPv2 Protocol only.

• GQ, written by Peter Stamfest, is a tool written in C, and it also needs GTK installed. GTK is the GNU toolkit for development in the X-Windows Environment. This is, without doubt, a very inter-sting implementation of an LDAP client. You can also download it from http://biot.com.gq. GTK can be downloaded from the GNU Web site: http://www.gnu.org/directory/GNU/gtk.html.

• Mark Wilcox developed PLUMS, a set of tools written in Java. PLUMS stands for Practical Ldap User Management System. You need the following software to run it: JDK 1.15 or better, Swing 1.0, Netscape Directory SDK 3.05. The project home page is: http://www.mjwilcox.com/plums.

• Just for completeness, I will mention another link where you can get information on using the Netscape Browser to access LDAP directories. The URL is http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/communicator/ldap45.htm.

• One more very interesting tool is the phpLDAPadmin, written and managed by David Smith. You can download the software from: http://phpldapadmin.sourceforge.net. As the product name suggests, the software is written entirely in PHP. You need a Web server with the PHP preprocessor installed in order to use this product. You also have to make sure you have the ldap support enabled when you install the PHP preprocessor. The installation of phpLDAPadmin is straightforward. You unzip the distribution in the document root of your Web server, edit the configuration file using the example delivered with the software, and that is it. You now have a fantastic GUI to administer your directory server. The software is well documented and structured, allowing you, therefore, to adapt it to your needs and personal taste.

By the time you read this book, there may be more products available. Now and then, use your favorite search engine to search the Internet to see if there are additional tools for your site.