On Wed, 2008-01-09 at 23:10 -0500, Ric Moore wrote: > 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...... > > Good lord, you got that one right! > > > > 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. :-) > > It looks like it'll take a pile of answers to figure out the question. > Several of the sites that I followed seemed to work, until it blew up. > The next example paragraph, in the how-to noted a successful completion > and I got a spew of error code. > > I got some sort of IQ and darn good SAT scores, and I know sure as hell > that I can follow a blooming script. So, I tried another site which gave > "slightly" different instructions and it blew up. I knew from the get-go > that I was over my head, so I was very careful to go step-by-step. > > Since I have the step-by-step from the horse's mouth, I hope to achieve > success, especially when Ed did it in 3 minutes!! I'll report > back ...after I find a toothpick to remove the carpet from my teeth. ---- Ed's smarter than most of us. It took me a few weeks but I was trying to get samba included - actually a vampire (import - suck the blood) of an existing Windows domain controller to be the part of the initial wave so I made it hard on myself. I found the answer to be, LDAP System Administration by Gerald Carter. It's getting old, long in the tooth (it actually uses ldbm which has long been deprecated), but it made perfectly good sense. Craig
