LDAP is boring
A friend of mine, a software engineer of no small repute, recently declared he'd rather watch paint dry than work on LDAP, labeling it the "cardigan of computing." This made me chuckle. Though I…
Why using LDAPS for LDAP is better than StartTLS
Using TLS on port 636 for LDAP, often referred to as LDAP over SSL (LDAPS), versus using StartTLS over the standard LDAP port 389, reflects different approaches to securing LDAP…
A Beginners Guide to Deploying OpenLDAP with Ansible
Before orchestration software existed most places typically automated repetitive tasks with cron. While cron is a great tool, cron jobs are not centralized and need to…
Ansible and OpenLDAP (Part 1)
Deploying LDAP environments can vary in complexity. It can be as easy as installing OpenLDAP through yum or apt and loading the database or as difficult as bringing up…
Monitoring Your LDAP Replication
Most LDAP server software support some sort of replication between multiple servers. OpenLDAP in particular has support for the syncrepl overlay (link) and also has…
How To Hire An LDAP Or Monitoring Consultant
Here’s some things to look for in hiring any Linux or UNIX expert, but especially LDAP or monitoring experts: (NOTE: THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST; JUST ONE VERY GOOD…
Tip: Why You Always Need More Than Two LDAP Servers
You always need more than two LDAP servers. In a replicated environment, two servers is never enough. If you have only two servers, you can’t easily take one off line.…
Tip: Pay Attention To The LDAP Monitoring Branch (CN=Monitor)
All modern enterprise LDAP servers have a cn=monitor branch which can be used to fetch server statistics. Many of the statistics presented under cn=monitor are very…
Trick: Using LDAP To Expose Your Directory To SAAS Or Cloud Services
If you have Active Directory on site, or for that matter, any directory server that supports the LDAP protocol, you can use your directory for most cloud services, and…
Tip: Hide Those LDAP Simple Authentication Passwords From the Command Line History
If you use LDAP simple authentication, you should take care to hide the LDAP password from the command line history. A lot of UNIX shells environments are configured…