Not what I had hoped for
Although it spends a lot of time talking about OpenLDAP, the version is covers is outdated. I would also have hoped to find more information about how to choose which schema's. The email section does not mention the different attempts at standardizing a schema.
Book is dated
I am giving this 3 stars because it does a fair job of explaining basic LDAP structure. It does a fairly good job on administration of just LDAP but LDAP is usually used as a base upon which other applications rely upon.
If you are trying to integrate something with LDAP, as I was, then this is not the book for that. Also, this book is a little dated as it does not cover openLDAP 2.4. SLURPD is no longer used for replication in the latest openLDAP 2.4 releases...
The author does make an attempt at application integration but does an extremely poor job of it. For example, on the topic of Replacing NIS there is absolutely no mention of NSCD (Name Server Caching Daemon) which is included on every major Linux distribution. If you are integrating Samba with openLDAP, then it's crucial that you understand how NSCD works as it can cause Samba to break yet all the Linux tool-sets continue working.
If you have this book, then on page 113, the author talks about optimizing nss_ldap searches which is good. But later in the book on page 168 on the topic of Samba integration, there is no mention of the fact that you may, and most likely, need to revisit the contents of page 113 again. Samba and associated tools, by default, create a Computers container to hold computer accounts. If you implemented the searches as described on page-113 alone, you find you can not join workstations to a samba domain unless you also include a line that reads:
nss_base_passwd ou=computers,dc=plainjoe,dc=org?one
I sense that some attention to detail is lost considering the 2nd half of the book is on application integration and things like I just explained are left out. I suppose one could argue that you should have learned this after reading page 113 but it would have saved me some time if it was mentioned...
I would recommend this book as a companion to other openLDAP books that do a better job of covering application integration. I give this 3 stars because the Active Directory coverage and reference seems pretty good and the coverage of .conf file settings seems good.
Pretty good stuff
I'm happy with this book. It's a little out of date and the details are getting a bit, shall we say, "off". However, it is a much better set of documentation that rummaging through the RFCs and paltry OpenLDAP README content :)
A book well worth its price
This book is written a while ago and it definitely needs update. It frequently refers to RFCs and states "blah blah is not yet accepted as standard" but probably it is accepted as one by now.
The organization of this book is a little chaotic. When I read it from the chapter 1, introduction, it was still not clear what I was getting into. After reading it all, I still think the introduction was not very helpful. I don't think reading this book from cover to cover all through would help a lot.
Nonetheless, after reading through this book with actual practice (installing OpenLDAP and running the examples as the book illustrated), I got good grasp of the concepts of LDAP and understanding how it works.
I like its practical examples and connection to other applications.
In conclusion, I feel I spent my money well on this book.
O'reilly books are the best
Another great O'reilly book. O'reilly, IMHO are the best technical books.
(22 reviews)
