On Tuesday, 22 June 2010 00:37:41 Bryan Boone wrote:
Hi everyone. I am a noob to LDAP and I have a question.
I am on a team that is building a special server. This server will be running linux with an apache web server with PHP and apache is running a special website that we designed.
I need to have the website be able to query LDAP servers for web authentication. So when a user connects to this special web server, they are prompted for a user name and password. Then I want to have the website check the LDAP server to make sure that the user is indeed a user of the website on our special server. So in a sense our special server will be an LDAP client.
So my question is??? Is an LDAP client to be run as a Daemon or service?
No daemon is necessary.
Is this what OpenLDAP provides?
OpenLDAP provides libraries, a server, and some commandline client utilities.
Or can I simply use function calls (from PHP or C) from the OpenLDAP library for the authentication?
Yes, you can use php_ldap or similar, or you can have your application rely on the web server to do the authentication. Apache has an authentication module for LDAP.
Basically all I need is...
The user brings up the web page. The user enters in the user name and password. The server uses PHP or C to check to see if the entered information matches an LDAP server. The web grants or denies access. The LDAP server connection is closed.
No other actions or information from the LDAP server is needed.
Well, you said you need to "make sure that the user is indeed a user of the website". Are all users in the LDAP directory users of the website? If not, you may need a little bit more ...
Regards, Buchan