Hi list. I have a question about an ldap-base that I maintain

The base contains about 500,000 records with attribute uid (single value and unique) and code(multi value; typically between 10 and 200 values, 5-50 bytes or more each, not unique). The code attribute is indexed on eq and sub for historical reasons, but the index is no longer needed (if it ever was). The uid attribute is, and will stay, indexed on eq.

Tests reveal that updating records can be time consuming when they contain a large number of long codes, sometimes about 1.25 seconds pr. record(!). In contrast to this, when I update without the index, I get around 75 recs/second. Searching is still fast, as I never search for code without uid.

So I'm going to drop that index, no doubt about it. The reliable method would be to slapcat-reconfigure-slapadd of course, but that will cost lots of planning and timing (the base is replicated on 3 servers, and is constantly updated, 2 servers must be available at all the time). It is feasible, but it *will* be a pain.

So: Can't i simply drop the index from the config file, restart, and thats it? That is, remove the line:

index code eq,sub

And perhaps the code.dbb file from the database directory? Perhaps slapindex too?

Further tests indicate that it works, lookups, updates and everything seem OK. But there is a worrying warning in the logfile:

2007-09-11 12:09:53.742266500 <= bdb_equality_candidates: (code) index_param failed (18)

The warning persists after slapindex, but is not there when I search for attributes that was "born" without an index.

So will it break eventually? Or do I need to tell the backend something?

Background (as much as I can dig up, perhaps too much):

OpenLDAP: slapd 2.3.25 Backend: back_bdb, vers 4.2 (Berkeley DB, Btree, version 9) Linux: Debian 2.6.18 Sears filter (always): "(&(uid=...)(code=...))" (experimentally shown to work fine without index on "code")

And the same question for:

OpenLDAP: slapd 2.2.26 Backend: ldbm (Berkeley DB, Btree, version 8) Linux: Mandrake Linux 9.0 3.2-1mdk Sears filter (always): "(&(uid=...)(code=...))"

Thanks for reading this far :-) and for any answers.

- Ole Thomsen