[gentoo-server] LDAP

[Wendall Cada]

I'm doing some research and admit I'm at a bit of a loss in regard to
LDAP.

I currently manage my servers with DSA-ssh only access and manage
virtual mail and local unix mail accounts with mysql, using the virtual
mail setup. I've been very pleased with the setup and have even written
some administrative tools to make administering email quite simple.
However, recently I've been looking at LDAP to administer accounts on
the server. I'm a bit confused though and could use some help.

I would like to administer the mail accounts via LDAP, and I see some
sparse examples, though it is well documented in the postfix docs. I'm
sure I could get it up and running, but the end goal would be to use a
GUI desktop app to allow our non-techie desk jockeys to modify email
account settings, store customer account information and personal
address books. Is this even possible? Or am I right back to creating
more cl scripts just using ldap as a backend.

Also, LDAP is a bit unwieldy. There appears to be no clear method for
creating schemas, and the lingo is entirely cryptic. It's damn near like
having to create your own damn dtd to just publish a web page, I fail to
see the usefulness of this.

There also appears to be a new configuration that uses an ldap schema.
It appears to complicate a fairly simple configuration process. I'm not
sure what the goal was in this. Is openldap moving in the direction of
completely bizarre and unusable, or does this actually serve some useful
function? Reading through their documentation, I don't read any valid
argument for changing a ~20 line configuration to something entirely
impossible to change with any ease.

Also, I see they have a default using bdb on the backend. I've gone away
from bdb because it breaks servers frequently. Minor version bumps often
break compatibility. Is there a good, fast alternative?

Another note. For heavy loads, I use proxy:mysql to connect from
postfix, since it creates a persistent connection. Can I use proxy:ldap
to achieve the same thing? Or is this even necessary with ldap? In my
current setup, I can handle around 500,000+ emails per day, since there
isn't much mysql overhead with the persistent connection.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Wendall

-- 
Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff
on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)
        -- Linus Torvalds