[imp] Scalable Webmail HOWTO and LDAP doubts

Paulo Jan paulojan at yahoo.com
Tue Dec 9 16:26:49 PST 2003


Hi all:

	A few years ago I followed the instructions in the
"Scalable Webmail HOWTO" to set up a quick and dirty
webmail system at my job. Back then I had no idea
whatsoever about LDAP, and I honestly didn't know what
I was doing. I don't remember most of the details, but
somehow I managed to make everything work following
the instructions in the HOWTO.
	
	Fast-forward to the present: a few days ago I decided
to start learning about LDAP, beginning with the
basics: schemas, attributes, objects, OIDs... After
reading about all of the above, I tried setting up an
example LDAP directory for an hypothetical webmail
system (just as a test). I found again the Scalable
Webmail HOWTO... and was very surprised when I saw the
example LDIF entry in it:
	
	
	dn: uid=someuser, o=someorg, c=us
	uid: someuser
	userpassword: somepassword
	maildrop: fulladdress at machine.dom.ain
	mailacceptinggeneralid: someuser

	
	Specially because some of these attributes (maildrop,
mailacceptinggeneralid) don't seem to appear in any
LDAP schema that I have seen (certainly not in the
ones that ship with OpenLDAP 2.1), and also because it
lacks the "objectClass" attribute that seems to be
mandatory. I tried to add this entry to my LDAP
directory... and of course, it failed. It only worked
when I added the "objectClass: person" line and took
out all the non-standard attributes.
	
	With this in mind, what I'd like to know is: is the
above because am I doing something wrong, or because
the Scalable Webmail HOWTO is effectively out of date?
I remember that I used OpenLDAP 1.2 in my working
webmail, while now I'm using OpenLDAP 2.1.12, so maybe
it's because of that (maybe OpenLDAP 2 enforces schema
compliancy?), but I'd like to be sure. Is there anyone
who has followed the instructions in the HOWTO with
OpenLDAP 2.1 and has managed to make it work? If so,
what did I miss? (The original webmail that I set up
isn't in production anymore, so I can't go and look).
	
	Basically, what I am seeing is that, according to
what I'm learning about LDAP right now, the LDIF in
the HOWTO is incorrect, and I'd like to know whether
that's true (and if so, how could it work back in
1999) or whether I missed something in my self-taught
LDAP course.


				Paulo.



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