System administrators often spend a great deal of time managing configuration information located on many different machines: usernames, passwords, printer configurations, email client configurations, and network filesystem configurations, to name a few. LDAPv3 provides tools for centralizing all of the configuration information and placing it under your control. Rather than maintaining several administrative databases (NIS, Active Directory, Samba, and NFS configuration files), you can make changes in only one place and have all your systems immediately "see" the updated information. Practically platform independent, this book uses the widely available, open source OpenLDAP 2 directory server as a premise for examples, showing you how to use it to help you manage your configuration information effectively and securely. OpenLDAP 2 ships with most Linux distributions and Mac OS X, and can be easily downloaded for most Unix-based systems. After introducing the workings of a directory service and the LDAP protocol, all aspects of building and installing OpenLDAP, plus key ancillary packages like SASL and OpenSSL, this book discusses: configuration and access control; distributed directories - replication and referral; using OpenLDAP to replace NIS; using OpenLDAP to manage email configurations; using LDAP for abstraction with FTP and HTTP servers, Samba, and Radius; interoperating with different LDAP servers, including Active Directory; and programming using Net::LDAP.

About the Author
Gerald (Jerry) Carter received his Masters degree in Computer Science from Auburn University, where he continues to pursue his PhD. He has been a member of the SAMBA development Team since 1998 and his involvement with UNIX systems and network administration of UNIX began in 1995. Jerry currently works for HP, working on embedded printing appliances. He has published articles with various web-based magazines and teaches instructional courses as a consultant for several companies and conferences. Gerald has also written books for SAMS Publishing.

Reviews
"This is a clearly written and well structured book with good use of example and figures... I thoroughly commend the text to those who are looking to centralise information directories." - Raza Rizvi, news@UK, December 2003



Book Information
ISBN 9781565924918
Author Gerald Carter
Format Paperback
Page Count 295
Imprint O'Reilly Media
Publisher O'Reilly Media