Andrew Bartlett wrote:
Or maybe one should recommend in a deployment note to use this overlay with back-ldap?
The deployment note should recommend to avoid using this overlay at all, except for the purpose it was designed. I would recommend to avoid distributing it with OpenLDAP; rather, with samba4 for use with OpenLDAP.
While I don't want to be antagonistic about this, if it becomes a situation where Samba4 has to distribute OpenLDAP overlays (rather than have a reasonable expectation that distributions will pick them up as part of OpenLDAP distributions), I'm worried about the logistics.
How would Samba best go about packaging, maintaining and distributing OpenLDAP overlays? How specific to particular versions of OpenLDAP are overlays, when built as binaries?
Also, how would I as an external package build an overlay against OpenLDAP? Would the normal results of an OpenLDAP installation be enough? (I'm just not familiar with this area).
Fortunately, in this particular case I already handle on the client side (where I prefer to handle most of this). My philosophy is to do as much as possible on the client side, as this will promote interoperability with other directory servers, if and when they want to have Samba4 support as well. But I like to at least ask the question, as the less fiddling I have to do the better.
I also think it could be useful to others in future, as transitions are made from manual to automatic management of some attributes.
I was not speaking "officially"; I just wanted to note that we have a somewhat "loose" policy about external modules:
- generally useful: get into servers/slapd/overlays/ and known to configure, so that they can either be statically built into slapd or built and installed as run-time modules
- less generally useful: get distributed into contrib/slapd-modules/ and usually maintained lined up with the rest of the suite
- even less generally useful: remain into the ITS in the contrib folder and, unless the contributor maintains them, they slowly fade away because of the evolution of slapd.
Specially developed modules that are mainly useful for interaction with Samba4, like those we're prototyping in these days, would be generally useful for Samba4 users/developers, but while in some cases they might be of really general usefulness even for non-Samba4 users, in other cases they are quite specific and occasionally violate LDAPv3 specs. In that case, it is (as usual) a matter of drawing the line.
I don't have any objection into maintaining and distributing, say, the contents of a folder contrib/slapd-samba4-modules, including a dedicated configure (or extending OpenLDAP's, or whatever), but I'd like to make it clear what modules are, let's say, recommended for general use and what are not, unless in the specific context of interoperating with Samba4.
p.
Ing. Pierangelo Masarati OpenLDAP Core Team
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