Many thank to Colin, Kevin and Andrew for getting back to me. Regarding openldap - my (simple) goal is have it running a global address book, and connecting to Outlook clients.
The problem I have run up against is the netscape 4.77 connects very well to ldap, and will show the entire list of addresses if given a * for name. However Outlook does not like this (I can list all email addresses in Outlook Express containing an @ - however this is not a very usable solution. Outlook 2002 doesn't seem to do this well either). Apart from running different mail clients (this is not an option unfortunately), is there a better way of providing a good global address book. I haven't really looked at how to add, modify, or delete entries yet! Regards, David Mateer Interlynx m: 0701 070 6032 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] w: www.interlynx.co.uk -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Andrew Back Sent: 04 July 2002 11:17 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [scottish] LDAP On Thu, 4 Jul 2002, David Mateer wrote: > Dear Everyone > > I'm looking into ldap directories. There is an open source ldap server > on www.openldap.org <http://www.openldap.org/> One of the definitions > I've found of ldap is: ".an Internet protocol that email programs use to > look up contact information from a server.." Now this sounds exactly > what I want. > > Basically my goal is to setup a global address book for a group, that do > not want to buy MS Exchange. They would also like a shared diary (which > Squirrelmail offers in very rudimentary form). > > I would like to offer webmail support too (through Apache, PHP, and > Squirrelmail - www.squirrelmail.org <http://www.squirrelmail.org/> , > and I've setup and imap server from University of Washington - > www.washington.edu/imap/). The imap, and webmail works very well, and I > can recommend their very simple and effective interfaces. I've had > fairly limited success with openldap, and it seemed to be running very > slowly on my linux server (albeit a 233MHZ, 64Mb with hardly any disk > space), and it seemed to be complex. > > My question is: is anyone running ldap services, do they think it is > worth it, and if not, what are the alternatives? It's the standard for network based repositories of such information. You really have no alternative for your application, well, maybe NIS/NIS+ somehow. Or if your feeling very sick DCE Cell Directory Services, which is very expensive and equally as complex. And based on X.500, as LDAP is. If OpenLDAP is your problem you could look at products from iPlanet, Novell, Siemens Meta, Critical Path etc. They all offer LDAP servers, but with GUIs for server configuration, managing data and ACLs and with some even schema management. OpenLDAP is cheap but ACL management is terrible and it isn't exactly the fastest (although it should be fine for your purpose). Maybe someone has a commercial OpenLDAP, a la Stronghold/Apache.. Are you just using LDAP as an address book? You can also have IMAPD (and probably webmail) authenticate users against the LDAP directory. That way you add a user with a script/cgi to LDAP instead of passwd, they can authenticate from LDAP for IMAP & web, and they end up in the directory. I built a similar system for an ASP that numerous servers for IMAP, webmail authenticated SMTP, calendering, web based white pages etc all plugged into LDAP. It's worth persevering with. Cheers, Andrew -------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.lug.org.uk http://www.linuxportal.co.uk http://www.linuxjob.co.uk http://www.linuxshop.co.uk -------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.lug.org.uk http://www.linuxportal.co.uk http://www.linuxjob.co.uk http://www.linuxshop.co.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------
