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OpenLDAP server daemon slapd Installation in Ubuntu

First, install the OpenLDAP server daemon slapd and ldap-utils, a package containing LDAP management utilities:

By default slapd is configured with minimal options needed to run the slapd daemon.

The configuration example in the following sections will match the domain name of the server. For example, if the machine’s Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) is ldap.example.com, the default suffix will be dc=example,dc=com.

Populating LDAP

OpenLDAP uses a separate directory which contains the cn=config Directory Information Tree (DIT). The cn=config DIT is used to dynamically configure the slapd daemon, allowing the modification of schema definitions, indexes, ACLs, etc without stopping the service.

slapd - Stand-alone LDAP Daemon

LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is a proposed open standard for accessing global or local directory services over a network and/or the Internet. A directory, in this sense, is very much like a phone book. LDAP can handle other information, but at present it is typically used to associate names with phone numbers and email addresses. LDAP directories are designed to support a high volume of queries, but the data stored in the directory doesn’t change very often.

OpenLDAP includes slapd (a stand-alone LDAP server), slurpd (a stand-alone LDAP replication server), libraries implementing the LDAP protocol, utilities, tools, and sample clients.

Slapd is the stand-alone LDAP daemon. It listens for LDAP connections on any number of ports (default 389), responding to the LDAP operations it receives over these connections. slapd is typically invoked at boot time, usually out of /etc/rc.local.