****Re: openldap + kmail

[Craig White]

On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 13:20 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> Craig White wrote:
> 
> >> It's not unreasonable to ask for an example. The average user has zero
> >> interest in finding out how LDAP works, and a lot of interest in getting
> >> his contacts working.
> > ----
> > Yes - it actually is unreasonable since there is no standard way of
> > setting up LDAP address books.
> > 
> > Since we seem to keep having this discussion...let me restate so we are
> > clear.
> > 
> > There simply is no standard for LDAP address books.
> > 
> > There simply is no standard way to set anything up in LDAP...it's an
> > erector set.
> > 
> > Feel free to write up something that explains how to set up LDAP and
> > integrate client applications such as address book clients.
> 
> You obviously know far more about this than me,
> and you have been very helpful to me on this subject,
> but I feel you are being far too sweeping here.
> 
> My conclusion after hitting my head against the wall many times
> is that by far the simplest way to do anything with openLDAP
> is through phpLDAPadmin, which really does make the construction
> of an LDAP "directory" quite straightforward.
> (PhpMyAdmin does much the same for MySQL -
> are they both written by the same person or team? -
> I have found them two of the most useful tools in Linux.)
> 
> PhpLDAPadmin offers an Address Book template for adding entries,
> which does seem to me to provide a more or less standard address book,
> with entries following the inetOrgPerson objectClass.
----
agreed that phpldapadmin does handle the templating but so does
Kaddressbook when you create entries with Kaddressbook.

If you look under the covers and see what phpldapadmin is doing to
create entries, you will see that it adds the necessary objectclasses
for the attributes it is creating so you don't have to rummage through
the various schema files.

I use phpldadmin but not very often. I use horde/imp/turba for webmail
and ldap address books as turba is a very effective ldap client for
adding/editing entries. I also use Webmin LDAP Users and Groups to
add/edit my 'users' in LDAP. Kaddressbook users mostly have read only
access on my network but a select few have write privileges but they
have to be more careful with entries because LDAP will insist on things
like 'sn' and Kaddressbook doesn't always make it clear why a 'new'
entry will fail.

phpldapadmin and phpmyadmin are completely different projects, with
different teams, with different objectives and use php to do database
administration tasks, hence the name similarity.

Craig