On Wed, 2008-01-09 at 22:39 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote: > Craig White wrote: > > On Wed, 2008-01-09 at 14:16 +0000, Timothy Murphy wrote: > >> Brian Millett wrote: > >> > >>> I have a file of names, phone numbers, etc. that has the following format > >>> that is used at my work: > >>> Name|Email|Ext.|Home #|Cellular #|Pager|Title > >>> > >>> sample data: > >>> > >>> Baker, Steve B.|sbb|15|314-215-4141|314-591-8181|| Director of Technology > >>> Bowland, Chris|cyb|33|314-835-1216||314-663-3132|Java Developer > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> I wrote a perl script to parse this and put it into a valid ldif format: > >> Thanks for your script, which I shall study. > >> > >> But one problem with setting up an address book in this way > >> is that there seems to be no standard LDAP format for addresses, > >> and an email client probably will not understand a particular format. > >> > >> For example, I use kmail, which claims to understand LDAP. > >> But if you export your kmail (or kaddressbook) list in LDIF format > >> it is more of less useless for putting on an openldap server. > >> > >> As far as I can see, the only reasonably general format for this is vCard > >> (which is more or less what kmail uses) > >> but there doesn't seem to be any standard way > >> of translating vCard to LDAP (or LDIF) format. > >> > >> It's amazing to me that there is not a standard way > >> of putting an address book on an openldap server > >> which can be understood by all email clients > >> since this seems to be the major use of openldap. > >> > >> But I am far from expert in this subject; > >> perhaps I have misunderstood the situation? > > ---- > > On Fedora (I think, for certain on RHEL), the openldap-servers comes > > with many 'migration' scripts from padl that can take static file > > entries (/etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group, /etc/hosts...) and > > migrate them into an LDIF which you can then import. Their scripts are > > very, very good and should be the basis for anyone looking to migrate to > > LDAP. > > > > Address Book clients such as Kontact (which is what Kmail would use), or > > Thunderbird, Evolution, Outlook, etc. all have differing notions of > > which attributes LDAP should offer. Let me repeat this another > > way...THERE ARE NO STANDARDS for attributes that Address Book client > > applications will use. This can be viewed as a negative or a positive. > > Positive because you can support a variety of address book clients in a > > variety of ways. Negative because if you don't know what you're doing, > > it's confusing. > > > > Therefore, whatever any program exports as an LDIF will differ from each > > other program and it's up to the 'administrator' to do find/replace for > > the attributes that they intend to use on the LDAP server...the only > > other way is the Microsoft way which is prescribed. Once you absorb the > > methodology, it becomes clear that the Microsoft way is limiting. > > Funny.... I knew that Ric's extremely general question was going to fan out > to be much more than he thought he was asking...... > > I'd dump all that I know about ldap here....but it would take me too long to > type it all and maybe never answer the question that Ric thinks he is > asking. :-) ---- lateral answer, I directed him to the Administrator's Guide on the OpenLDAP's website. This was simply a clarification on why different address book clients write different attributes in an exported LDIF file which probably will fail when you try to ldapadd/slapadd them into LDAP Craig
