[TriLUG] Suse releases exchange server clone ($999) no client licenses

[Thunder Bear]

On Tuesday, September 24, 2002, at 07:53 AM, Jon Carnes wrote:

> The next nice thing will be when LDAP (or some Directory Services) is
> fully functional and supported with easy installations and
> administration.

That isn't too far off, actually.

Setting up LDAP is more manual than it needs to be.  The thing is, 
OpenLDAP is so open ended that it lets you do whatever you want with it 
instead of railroading you through one or more recommended 
configurations.  I think if you've got a package-based distro that has 
already installed OpenLDAP but not configured it yet, it might be a 
good job for a perl or python script to handle the initial 
configuration and set up the framework for it to run in a fairly 
standardized way.

I've set up LDAP to function as a back end to Samba in replacing a 
Windows PDC and while it is not as easy as setting up Samba by itself, 
I think it could be scriptable.

Unfortunately LDAP seems to be lacking the caliber of admin tools that 
a Windows admin is used to dealing with.  The GUI tools that are out 
there are IMHO pretty bad, and sometimes don't cleanly interoperate 
with OpenLDAP.  I haven't personally seen a lot of progress on this 
front.  However, if you are halfway decent with PHP, it might not be 
too difficult to build an admin tool with a web based front end.  PHP 
has all the necessary hooks built in to fully integrate with OpenLDAP 
(once OpenLDAP is initially configured and started).