standards

This book is probably the best book I have ever read on OpenLDAP implimentation. The title is somewhat misleading in that it does not go into LDAP in general, including deep history, heavy schema development, etc.

However, it covers the down and dirty of implimenting OpenLDAP in detail. It covers:

-detailed slapd.conf configuration
-pam_ldap
-nss specific and pam specific configuration parameters in ldap.conf
-DNS implimentation with LDAP
-conversion tools

This book is an excellent guide on actually putting LDAP to work, including design, configuration and implimentation.

This book is NOT designed for people looking to impliment other LDAP software (iPlanet, etc). This book does not cover in depth enterprise level roll-out, research, and user feedback.

But if you want a great book that covers configuration and usage of OpenLDAP and Linux..this IS the book for you.

The book starts with a section on a brief introduction of LDAP before moving in LDAPv3 overview. OpenLDAP takes two chapters, then a section of chapters on Application Integration. Letting LDAP replace NIS, integrating with email, Unix and LDAP, LDAP interoperability and LDAP and Perl finish the chapters off. There are some appendixes that include some of the common Attributes and Objects also.

If you are using Windows and some LDAP application this book does not contain a lot of information for you specific to the OS, but is a great reference for LDAP overall. Most of the code examples rely on Unix understandings. The review of access and OpenLDAP applies directly to numerous systems in understanding how rights are applied.

Replication and referrals is a great topic that is covered well for the beginner. For someone wanting advanced architecture ideas and designs, this chapter does not go deep enough for you. But I enjoyed it still letting me review and pick up a few items I was unaware of.

LDAP administrators that are just starting out, or even ones that have been doing LDAP for some time and need to secure or expand the directory infrastructure could benefit from this book.

This book is an awesome reference for someone interested in SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION (hence the title.) If you are a newbie looking for broader, philosophical reasoning or basic directory theory, this is NOT the book for you. If you know why you want a directory and understand the basics, then this book will definitely meet your needs. I was especially pleased with the no-nonsense approach, that got me up and running with a replicated directory, including referrals and references, by page 90. Excellent recommendations with enough detail to get the job done, along with great references to other resources and tools. The only thing that was lacking was the Samba integration chapter, which is 2.2 based, probably due to the book's age. While there are other resources out there, a second edition would still be nice.