On Sat, 2007-03-10 at 03:09 -0500, Ric Moore wrote: > On Fri, 2007-03-09 at 08:16 -0700, Craig White wrote: > > On Fri, 2007-03-09 at 03:12 -0500, Ric Moore wrote: > > > > p/s *** I'll be damned- *** > > > http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/dir-server/install/7.1/sn.prepare.decide.html > > > ..says that the default setup files are in /opt! I AM taken aback. My > > > head is hurting from reading this document. I'm really hoping for easy > > > as described in the linux.com article. The RedHat.com article mentions > > > "Enterprise RedHat Linux" (translated $$$$) so I'm looking for the > > > Fedora Version (the cheap seats) > > ---- > > probably installs to /opt because of its Netscape roots - more of which > > you will find when you look at the base configuration and certificate > > generation which are clearly Netscape Directory Server pedigree. > > > > Never say never... > > > > Installing Fedora Directory Server is relatively easy but if you don't > > understand how LDAP works and can't operate LDAP basic commands > > (ldapadd/ldapmodify/ldapsearch) from the command line, you aren't likely > > to get very far, whether it's OpenLDAP or Fedora-DS > > This was a piece of cake, without doing the command line stuff. I had a > registered version of Netscape Server, that came with the old Caldera > Distro, which set up like a dream. Apache still doesn't come close to > the simplistic and intelligent design that Netscape put into their html > server project. It had a well-designed gui that you could use to admin > your site from anywhere. Click a couple of buttons, restart, it worked > without a stack of documents to read for weeks. It's a damn wonder FDS > is not installed by default. Ric ---- FDS isn't installed by default because there is simply no justification for doing so. All of the applications/daemons that have ldap client libraries compiled in as options (things like postfix/sendmail/kontact/evolution/etc.) all use the client libraries from OpenLDAP. FDS doesn't have any client libraries to offer and OpenLDAP provides robust LDAPv3 client functionality. To see what I mean, try 'rpm -e openldap' from a root command line to see just how many packages depend upon the openldap client libraries and I assure you that you will be surprised. I recognize that technically, the FDS-Admin console application is a client but it is a java client and of very limited functionality. Note, I don't know if the java-compat packages that are part of FC-6 have enough packages to run the FDS-Admin console application because everywhere I have installed FDS, I have installed the Sun version of Java. As to your assertion of the importance of a well designed gui for administration of a web server or ldap server or whatever, I suppose you realize that you can have a simple, consistent gui management application called MMC on Windows but by saying that, it becomes obvious that there is more than just the GUI. While Netscape's server products languished under the fire sale management of AOL, the open source community kept developing open source alternative software. You can get much of the same functionality of the FDS-Admin console (if not more) from things like phpldapadmin, gq, ldapadmin or webmin. So instead of installing OpenLDAP-Server you can install FDS and the choice is really up to the system administrator but neither is suitable as a default install. The point I was trying to make about needing to be versant with command line functionality of LDAP was this...if you can't query/maintain LDAP from the command line, you are never going to be able to debug/analyze how other applications interact with your LDAP server since LDAP doesn't operate in a vacuum. LDAP is only useful when you link in other applications and if you don't understand how they do that, you are going to get nowhere. Craig
