[Fedora-directory-users] How can I create a User ID alias?

[Jeff Clowser]

Richard Megginson wrote:

> Darren Fulton wrote:
>
>> I have an in production application at our office (Web Calendar) that I
>> am migrating to LDAP authentication using FDS from application internal
>> authentication.
>> Some of the users in the old program have user id's of $firstname and
>> they don't work because everyone in the ldap server was setup as
>> $firstinitial$lasthname.
>> I have not been sucessful at changing the User ID's in the application
>> from $firstname to $firstinitial$lastname.
>>
>> Question:  Is there a way that I can make aliases in FDS such that User
>> ID james equals User ID jjones?  If so, how can I do it?
>>  
>>
> FDS does not support LDAP aliases.  However, you can have a single 
> entry with two different uid attributes - uid is a multi-valued 
> attribute.  This will allow you to do an LDAP search for uid=james or 
> uid=jjones and get the same entry.  If you want to use uid as the 
> naming attribute for the DN, you will just have to pick one of the 
> values.
>
Be careful with this, though - even though LDAP allows/defines uid to be 
multivalued, I have seen some apps that expect uid to be single valued, 
and choke or give unexpected results on users that are not.  You'll only 
know, though, by trying it out and seeing if something breaks.  What is 
the web calendar app you are using?  Are you using any other apps that 
use your FDS?

 - Jeff