On Tue, 26 Oct 2010, Anton Chu wrote:

I'm in need of figuring out how I can effectively backup my ldap server then restore it in case of crisis.

The supported method of backup/restore is slapcat/slapadd.

1. /etc/init.d/slapd stop

There is no reason to stop slapd with modern slapd backends/versions.

2.  tar the following directories /etc/ldap /var/lib/ldap

I'm not sure what you're keeping in those areas. Things like schema files, your init scripts, etc. should be kept somehow. I consider this more of a system-level issue than an issue for OpenLDAP software, personally, but it's definitely something to keep in mind...

3.  convert the configs and dit to ldif

sudo slapcat -n 0 > backup/config.ldif sudo slapcat -n 1 > backup/users.ldif

This is the important part; make sure to do this for each defined database.

4./etc/init.d/slapd start

Again, unnecessary since you shouldn't need to stop in the first place.

Restore procedures: 1.  Reinstall a fresh vanilla ubuntu ldap server 2.  untar the compessed.tar.gz to original location

3.  /etc/init.d/slapd stop sudo slapadd -n 0 -l backup/config.ldif sudo slapadd -n 0 -l backup/users.ldif sudo cp backup/ldap.secret /etc/ldap.secret /etc/init.d/slapd start

That's certainly along the right idea.

Just a brainstorm and I'm sure it needs revising. TIA, Anton