7:07 a.m.
[deep breath, disclaimer: I am a knowledgeable end user, having
administered a LAN of Linux and Windows PCs at home for several years,
but I don't code and I knew nothing of LDAP until recently. I originally
submitted this to openldap-software, but the moderator said it was more
appopriate for this list. I have lurked for a week with increasing
agitation at my lack of technical knowledge - apologies if this question
is too stupid for most of you.]
I run an IMAP server on my Linux box at home (Debian Etch), so that I
can read my mail from anywhere, using any IMAP client (Outlook at work,
Evolution at home, Thunderbird at my in-laws, etc.). I got frustrated
with having to export and import my contacts all the time, never
remembering which client had the most up-to-date set. So I looked into
setting up my own LDAP server so they could live in one place, available
to any client, just like the email.
Sadly it doesn't seem to be that simple. Apt-get install slapd went fine
- Debian was even so kind as to set up a bdb database for me with suffix
"dc=mydomain", so all I had to do was create a rootdn and rootpw in
slapd.conf. I painstakingly exported my contacts from Outlook as CSV,
via Evolution as vCard then via http://labs.brotherli.ch/vcfconvert/
into LDIF. But trying to import the result into slapd gave lots of
errors, and this is when I discovered the joys of schemata. The
vCard-to-LDIF converter uses a variant Mozilla-address-book schema which
slapd doesn't understand. I tried tweaking the LDIF file with this
python script
(http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/476224) but
that fell over because some of my contacts don't have email addresses.
So slapd is up and running but I have no way of importing my contact
info without doing some Python hacking or re-keying the info (about 400
records).
Basic question: is there an existing schema that I can include in
slapd.conf which will allow my contacts to be intelligible to all the
clients I use (let alone might use)? They are just basic person data:
names, postal addresses, phone/fax numbers, email addresses, etc.
Assuming no, can I combine a schema for each client, if I can find one?
For example, the Mozilla one is here
(https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=166746), which will work
for Thunderbird, SeaMonkey etc. If I can find one for Evolution and one
for Outlook, could I just include them all, or would there be
incompatibilities? (Even if there aren't, a quick look at the Mozilla
one leads me to suspect that I would need to duplicate numerous fields.)
Does anyone successfully use LDAP with multiple clients? Is there an
easy way to do it? Judging from the 'AD-style AUX classes' thread there
are some issues with Outlook - in the first instance I would be happy if
both Evolution and Thunderbird/SeaMonkey could see and edit the same
contact data.
Thanks in advance for any help, and apologies for the lengthy footer
over which I have no control,
CC
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6:53 p.m.
--On Monday, January 21, 2008 3:07 PM +0000 "Carr, Chris"
<Chris.Carr(a)camden.gov.uk> wrote:
Basic question: is there an existing schema that I can include in
slapd.conf which will allow my contacts to be intelligible to all the
clients I use (let alone might use)? They are just basic person data:
names, postal addresses, phone/fax numbers, email addresses, etc.
No. The people who wrote email clients have all decided they each want
things in their own schema, more or less, so they are generally inoperable.
You have to have slapd load the schema bits each one wants, and populate
all of those bits, if you want all of them to be happy. I've filed bugs
with numerous email client authors to fix their things to not rely on
custom schema, or to allow the customization of what fields they look for,
with little success. Eudora at one time was the best client in honoring
custom schema, but they've morphed into thunderbird, so that pretty much
kills that.
Most of the clients will understand the general RFC fields, but you lose
the specific customizations they've made.
--Quanah
--
Quanah Gibson-Mount
Principal Software Engineer
Zimbra, Inc
--------------------
Zimbra :: the leader in open source messaging and collaboration
7:15 p.m.
Quanah Gibson-Mount wrote:
--On Monday, January 21, 2008 3:07 PM +0000 "Carr, Chris"
<Chris.Carr(a)camden.gov.uk> wrote:
> Basic question: is there an existing schema that I can include in
> slapd.conf which will allow my contacts to be intelligible to all the
> clients I use (let alone might use)? They are just basic person data:
> names, postal addresses, phone/fax numbers, email addresses, etc.
No. The people who wrote email clients have all decided they each want
things in their own schema, more or less, so they are generally inoperable.
You have to have slapd load the schema bits each one wants, and populate
all of those bits, if you want all of them to be happy. I've filed bugs
with numerous email client authors to fix their things to not rely on
custom schema, or to allow the customization of what fields they look for,
with little success. Eudora at one time was the best client in honoring
custom schema, but they've morphed into thunderbird, so that pretty much
kills that.
Most of the clients will understand the general RFC fields, but you lose
the specific customizations they've made.
Still, it would probably be worth spending a few days effort to collect the
different schema together and define a superset that contains all of their
respective customizations. Then you can use back-relay and the rewrite overlay
to present the client-specific views to each client. The result of that effort
would make a fine entry in the FAQ-o-Matic.
--
-- Howard Chu
Chief Architect, Symas Corp. http://www.symas.com
Director, Highland Sun http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
Chief Architect, OpenLDAP http://www.openldap.org/project/
4:08 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: Howard Chu [mailto:hyc@symas.com]
Sent: 22 January 2008 03:16
Subject: Re: Need a multi-client schema
Quanah Gibson-Mount wrote:
> <Chris.Carr(a)camden.gov.uk> wrote:
>
>> Basic question: is there an existing schema that I can include in
>> slapd.conf which will allow my contacts to be intelligible to all
>> the clients I use (let alone might use)?
>
> No. The people who wrote email clients have all decided they each
> want things in their own schema, more or less, so they are generally
> inoperable. You have to have slapd load the schema bits each one
> wants, and populate all of those bits, if you want all of them to be
> happy. I've filed bugs with numerous email client authors
to fix
> their things to not rely on custom schema, or to allow the
> customization of what fields they look for, with little success.
> Eudora at one time was the best client in honoring custom schema,
but
> they've morphed into thunderbird, so that pretty much kills
that.
>
> Most of the clients will understand the general RFC fields, but you
> lose the specific customizations they've made.
Still, it would probably be worth spending a few days effort to
collect the
different schema together and define a superset that contains all of
their
respective customizations. Then you can use back-relay and the
rewrite
overlay
to present the client-specific views to each client. The result of
that effort
would make a fine entry in the FAQ-o-Matic.
Thanks for the replies. Is there another way of doing this? Instead of
trying to create some super-schema for my server (which would be
outdated every time any of the clients altered its schema), could I not
simply replace each client's schema with a consistent one?
Let's say that the three clients I want to share contacts are Outlook,
Evolution and Thunderbird. Would it be possible to use the AD schema for
the LDAP server and for all three clients, replacing the default
schemata of Evolution and Thunderbird?
If this is not possible, how would the super-schema solution propagate
changes made by one client to the data visible to another? (Presumably
this is where "back-relay and the rewrite overlay" come in - will have
to read up on these.)
I found the Evolution schema, though I don't know how up-to-date it is:
http://cvs.mandriva.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/SPECS/openldap/evolutionperso
n.schema?view=co
... so I can try combining it with the Mozilla schema and see how far I
get before taking on Outlook. Does anyone know where to find the AD
schema? I can find dozens of pages about it, but can't actually download
it from any of them.
Yet another way of looking at this is to consider that the combination
of core, cosine and inetorgperson provides all the fields you need in a
basic address book, and it should be possible to get all the clients (at
least the non-MS ones) using that.
I'll report back if I make any progress, but Google shows that people
have been struggling with this problem since the dawn of LDAP, so I'm
not overly optimistic.
CC
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4:33 a.m.
Carr, Chris wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Howard Chu [mailto:hyc@symas.com]
> Sent: 22 January 2008 03:16
> Still, it would probably be worth spending a few days effort to
collect the
> different schema together and define a superset that contains all of
their
> respective customizations. Then you can use back-relay and the rewrite
overlay
> to present the client-specific views to each client. The result of
that effort
> would make a fine entry in the FAQ-o-Matic.
Thanks for the replies. Is there another way of doing this? Instead of
trying to create some super-schema for my server (which would be
outdated every time any of the clients altered its schema), could I not
simply replace each client's schema with a consistent one?
Let's say that the three clients I want to share contacts are Outlook,
Evolution and Thunderbird. Would it be possible to use the AD schema for
the LDAP server and for all three clients, replacing the default
schemata of Evolution and Thunderbird?
Since Evolution and Thunderbird are open source, you can of course modify them
to do whatever you want.
If this is not possible, how would the super-schema solution
propagate
changes made by one client to the data visible to another? (Presumably
this is where "back-relay and the rewrite overlay" come in - will have
to read up on these.)
Yes, you would create one main directory with the superset of data elements
and use back-relay to present distinct virtual directories to each client so
they will only see the attributes they're looking for. The rewrite overlay
would translate attribute names back and forth so that there aren't multiple
copies of identical data.
I found the Evolution schema, though I don't know how up-to-date
it is:
http://cvs.mandriva.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/SPECS/openldap/evolutionperso
n.schema?view=co
... so I can try combining it with the Mozilla schema and see how far I
get before taking on Outlook. Does anyone know where to find the AD
schema? I can find dozens of pages about it, but can't actually download
it from any of them.
As usual, Microsoft is not very forthcoming with docs, but there's quite a bit
of analysis already done here.
http://www.openldap.org/faq/data/cache/295.html
Yet another way of looking at this is to consider that the
combination
of core, cosine and inetorgperson provides all the fields you need in a
basic address book, and it should be possible to get all the clients (at
least the non-MS ones) using that.
I'll report back if I make any progress, but Google shows that people
have been struggling with this problem since the dawn of LDAP, so I'm
not overly optimistic.
CC
--
-- Howard Chu
Chief Architect, Symas Corp. http://www.symas.com
Director, Highland Sun http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
Chief Architect, OpenLDAP http://www.openldap.org/project/
5 a.m.
> Let's say that the three clients I want to share contacts
> are Outlook, Evolution and Thunderbird. Would it be possible
> to use the AD schema for the LDAP server and for all three
> clients, replacing the default schemata of Evolution and
> Thunderbird?
Since Evolution and Thunderbird are open source, you can of
course modify them to do whatever you want.
Um, yes. I meant would it be possible without recompiling anything.
Evolution, for example, can import a CSV file of Outlook contacts
perfectly, so the mapping is stored somewhere. If it's in an external
file, and the evolutionperson.schema is also read from an external file,
it might be possible to persuade Evolution to use Outlook fields by
default. If the schema is hard-coded, then yes it would need source
hacking and recompiling, which is not worth the trouble.
> I get before taking on Outlook. Does anyone know where to
> find the AD schema? I can find dozens of pages about it, but
> can't actually download it from any of them.
As usual, Microsoft is not very forthcoming with docs, but
there's quite a bit of analysis already done here.
http://www.openldap.org/faq/data/cache/295.html
Ah, thanks. That's very helpful.
CC
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12:23 a.m.
Carr, Chris wrote:
>> Let's say that the three clients I want to share
contacts
>> are Outlook, Evolution and Thunderbird. Would it be possible
>> to use the AD schema for the LDAP server and for all three
>> clients, replacing the default schemata of Evolution and
>> Thunderbird?
> Since Evolution and Thunderbird are open source, you can of
> course modify them to do whatever you want.
Um, yes. I meant would it be possible without recompiling anything.
Evolution, for example, can import a CSV file of Outlook contacts
perfectly, so the mapping is stored somewhere. If it's in an external
file, and the evolutionperson.schema is also read from an external file,
it might be possible to persuade Evolution to use Outlook fields by
default. If the schema is hard-coded, then yes it would need source
hacking and recompiling, which is not worth the trouble.
Your searches seem to have missed some useful hits:
http://feldt.com/work/projects/openLDAP/
includes scripts for importing Outlook CSV exports to LDIF, and Vcards to
LDIF. So apparently someone else has already figured out what schema are involved.
>> I get before taking on Outlook. Does anyone know where to
>> find the AD schema? I can find dozens of pages about it, but
>> can't actually download it from any of them.
> As usual, Microsoft is not very forthcoming with docs, but
> there's quite a bit of analysis already done here.
> http://www.openldap.org/faq/data/cache/295.html
Ah, thanks. That's very helpful.
--
-- Howard Chu
Chief Architect, Symas Corp. http://www.symas.com
Director, Highland Sun http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
Chief Architect, OpenLDAP http://www.openldap.org/project/
4:11 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: Howard Chu [mailto:hyc@symas.com]
Sent: 23 January 2008 08:24
Carr, Chris wrote:
>>> Let's say that the three clients I want to share contacts are
>>> Outlook, Evolution and Thunderbird. Would it be possible to
>>> use the AD schema for the LDAP server and for all three
>>> clients, replacing the default schemata of Evolution and
>>> Thunderbird?
>> Since Evolution and Thunderbird are open source, you can of course
>> modify them to do whatever you want.
>
> Um, yes. I meant would it be possible without recompiling anything.
> Evolution, for example, can import a CSV file of Outlook contacts
> perfectly, so the mapping is stored somewhere. If it's in an
> external file, and the evolutionperson.schema is also read from an
> external file, it might be possible to persuade Evolution to use
> Outlook fields by default. If the schema is hard-coded, then yes
> it would need source hacking and recompiling, which is not worth
> the trouble.
Your searches seem to have missed some useful hits:
http://feldt.com/work/projects/openLDAP/
includes scripts for importing Outlook CSV exports to LDIF, and Vcards
to LDIF. So apparently someone else has already figured out what
schema
are involved.
Um, no. If you study that page closely, you see that the author is
merely showing how to put a set of Evolution contacts and a *separate*
set of Outlook contacts into the same LDAP address book. There is no
mention of combining the data, or of propagating changes from one set to
the other. Specifically, there is no mention of a schema for Outlook (he
does include the evolutionperson.schema in slapd.conf, but without any
other mention of it). Whether the scripts to convert CSV and vCard
formats to LDIF actually do attribute/schema remapping as well is a moot
point, as both the links are broken.
Thanks anyway. It does at least confirm for me that Evolution reads its
schema from an external file, so it should be easy enough to edit that.
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Quanah Gibson-Mount