On Thursday 20 September 2007 23:45:53 Gavin Henry wrote:
Gabriel Stein wrote:
People...
I have a idea about OpenLDAP documentation. There´s a good documentation at OpenLDAP website. Why not create more efforts to create a Howto series? I´m writing constantlty a howto week´s about basic OpenLDAP features, like some integrations and hints. We can create something like a wiki, using the OpenLDAP documentation and "translate" this things to Howto´s.
Horward, we can help your efforts? Thanks for your good work.
Cheers.
Hi Gabriel.
I've often thought about this, as Samba do similar at: http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Main_Page as do other major OSS projects.
But, then if we look at a page relevant to *this* project, you get something like: http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba_%26_LDAP#Setting_up_PAM_and_NSS_to_use...
Which is incomplete, misleading, and wrong on all distributions but SUSE.
Or, you follow links on some of the other resources that have been posted in this thread, and you get something like this: http://fedoranews.org/mediawiki/index.php/How_to_setup_and_maintain_OpenLDAP... or this part: http://fedoranews.org/mediawiki/index.php/How_to_setup_and_maintain_OpenLDAP...
And, they missed the usual advice of editing migrate_common.ph (instead of the easier method of setting the LDAP_BASEDN environment variable), by only using the dc=example,dc=com example, thus ensuring all other users will be confused later: http://fedoranews.org/mediawiki/index.php/How_to_setup_and_maintain_OpenLDAP...
Here are the issues with your appreciated suggestions:
- The OpenLDAP project do not support 3rd Party software
While I don't have a problem with this, the question is why should this prevent OpenLDAP project documentation (with suitable disclaimers) from covering how to allow OpenLDAP to support other LDAP client software. For example, the only documentation available for configuring Solaris for using LDAP for user/group accounts assumes you use JES LDAP. Sun certainly isn't going to write any, and I would like to put the details somewhere before I forget them.
Is our only option something like http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Ldap
- We have to find the time to mentor and verify the howto/wiki
contributors.
Are you saying I need mentorship and verification?
- We have to find the time to fight the wiki spam
Not if you limit contributions to authenticated users. And there is the LDAP authentication plugin for mediawiki ...
- We have to find the time to keep the howtos updated
As the scratchpad wiki proves, I don't have *much* time ... but if a few people can spare a small amount of time, it may be viable.
- Resources, lack of resources, need more resources.
- etc.....
*My* first and foremost priority is to finish the Admin Guide, keep it accurate and up to date.
I think, as we have done all along, we leave the 3rd party integration to the 3rd party projects (like the wiki mentioned above).
Which obviously isn't doing such a great job. And, why should we leave it to Samba to document how to set up nss_ldap and OpenLDAP optimally? Or, is this an area nss_ldap should cover (including the indexes, ACLs etc. that should be configured on the server side)?
What we don't want is a wiki where people come along and start posting How tos that we don't have time to vet, which in turn starts to dilute the OpenLDAP quality brand and take our time away with the little resources we have.
It may be better than having hundreds of howtos out there in random places of much worse quality, leaving the impression that the OpenLDAP project prefers this to one authoritative place, where at least contributors or experts can correct mistakes (which we can't do for all the broken howtos).
However, what is *vital* is that we provide a means to put the Admin Guide sections into working configuration examples (which some sections have/will have). This could mean real world deployment examples etc.
But, if we can't cover nss_ldap, Solaris ldapclient, sudo, proftpd,bind, dhcpd, autofs, samba,apache-mod_vhost_ldap, freeradius, kmail, evolution, thunderbird (all of which I have used with OpenLDAP), what do we cover (that isn't covered in man pages)?
It's all very good having in depth guides, but sometimes it's better to get something running and come back to the main docs. The vessel in which we present these complete examples is irrelevant and can be decided at any point.
So, coming back to your wonderful offer of help. If you would like to look at the latest docs in our source repo and pick up a section/subsection that appeals to you, we can move towards a complete and detailed OpenLDAP 2.4 Admin Guide and then do the wiki/howto stuff.
Does that sound like a plan?
IMHO, it is more important to have concise, clear, documentation on getting the basics most people need to get started with (before they can justify spending more time to learn the ins and outs of all the features) with the most gain for the least effort, than documenting all the overlays, or the backends that are not used frequently.
For example, we have nothing to offer to compete with: http://directory.fedoraproject.org/ http://directory.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Howto:MigrateToLDAP http://directory.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Howto:OpenLDAPMigration http://directory.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Howto:Posix http://directory.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Howto:PAM http://directory.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Howto:Netgroups http://directory.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Howto:SolarisClient http://directory.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Howto:Automount http://directory.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Howto:Samba
So, from a "what can I do with this software before I decide which one" perspective, OpenLDAP will be at a disadvantage while we are prevented from mentioning anything besides OpenLDAP.
Regards, Buchan