LDAP Users Admin

Contents

Latest News From This Site

Introduction

Features

Prerequisites

Download & Links

TO DO

More Info

SourceForge Project Page

Users mailing list

Developers mailing list

CVS tree

Latest News From This Site


31 Out 2001

Still working on making the module compatible with Red Hat 7.1 and OpenLDAP 2.x, but as the 0.0.1 release had some bugs that affect the first time use of the module, not showing the "config" link so you can correctly configure the module, I decided to make a pre-release version of 0.0.2. This release works fine on Red Hat 6.2 and Caldera OpenLinux 2.4 (should work fine with any distribution that uses OpenLDAP 1.2.x), but users of Red hat 7.1 and other distros that use OpenLDAP 2.x should change the configuration parameter "Edit MS Outlook Address Book Fields" to "No" until all bugs are fixed on the final 0.0.2 release.

Release 0.0.2pre also contains some user interface enhancements, I hope you like then. But it'll need work on the language files for Italian and German (volunteers needed).

The CVS tree has a new module, "scripts", where you'll find hints on how to initialize the LDAP directory and how to package the sources into a Webmin Module (*.wbm file) you can install into Webmin.

30 Jul 2001

Work on making it compatible with Red Hat 7.1 and OpenLDAP 2.x. For a while the changes are only on CVS, because I still have to figure out how to make the (Outlook) address book fields work again.
Added some info on how to install and configure under Red Hat 7.1 (see prerequisites)
Take note of my new e-mail address: fernando@lozano.eti.br


07 Mar 2001

A new developer's release has been commited on CVS. It includes new language files for German and Italian contributed by Holger Pandel <pandel AT vrbank-moers.de> and Marco Lusini <m.lusini AT palazzochigi.it>. Besides, all pages are now using Webmin localization features.

25 Feb 2001

Added a link for downloading of Perldap RPM package
Added links for the sourceforge project and mailing lists pages
Tried to give to these pages a more pleasant layout :-)

Introduction

The LDAP Users Admin is a Webmin module for managing users accounts stored inside an LDAP directory. It was born from a need to use OpenLDAP to provide address book search capabilities for an internal e-mail server. My users were Windows users, so I decided LDAP would provide this data to OutlookExpress. Besides, I did not want to manage user accounts two times: once on LDAP (for the address book) and once again on /etc files (for maixboxes, disk quotas and authentication)

I'd not perform day-to-day maintenance on the mail server once it was setup. So I needed an easy front-end for newbie Linux administrators and Webmin was a perfect choice.

Features

Create, edit and delete Unix users on LDAP
Force a new user password
Get an unused UID and create the home dir for new users
Won't let you use a login name or uid that already exists
Webmin-based configuration and help
Webmin localization for English and Brazilian Portuguese

Prerequisites

This module depends on some software being installed on your system:

LDAP client libraries
PerlLDAP from Mozilla.org
Perl and Webmin, of course
NSS_LDAP and PAM_LDAP

My system is a mix of Red Hat 6.1 and 6.2 Intel boxes. I guess this module should work fine on other Linux distros and other CPUs, and if you can make it run elsewhere I'd love to know and put instructions here.

I use only RPMs from Red Hat (openldap, nss_ldap, and Perl are availabe on the standard install CDs; Webmin can be downloaded as an RPM package from webmin.com; and I found at rpmfind.net perlLDAP packaged as RPM). I hope to publish here detailed instructions on how to setup OpenLDAP and etc the way I did, but until then you'll have to look at these packages docs.

For Red Hat 7.1 Users

You should get the the latest developer's release from CVS. To install perldap using the RPM package, you first have to create a symbolic link from /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/ to symbolic link from /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/ esle the module won't be installed correctly. It will work in spite of being compiled for an older version of Perl, but you'll have to install using rpm -i --nodeps. Trust me, it is much easier to do this hack than compiling the Mozilla LDAP C SDK and PerlLDAP.

Also, do not forget to add "schemacheck off" to /etc/openldap/slapd.conf.

Download & Links

There are two packages you can download.

The first one is LDAP Users Adm per se. Download it and install using Webmin Modules Configuration.
The second one is a set of utilities that helps me create the initial entries on the directory, migrate user data and a CGI program to let users change their LDAP password. It is usefull as you may want to start using LDAP only to provide address book data, and later to use LDAP to provide user authentication and user profiles.

Here are some usefull links

OpenLDAP
Webmin
PerlLDAP pages at Mozilla.org
PerlLDAP own web site
RPM PerlLDAP package for Red Hat 6.x
RPM Find
Webmin Module for OpenLDAP
(It deals with managing OpenLDAP itself, i.e the sldapd daemon, while my Webmin module deals with managing LDAP contents)
ldap_browser
(This is another LDAP users administrator module; the author said he was inspired by my work. Take a look, it may be usefull to you. We are talking about joining efforts)

TO DO

Create, edit and delete Unix groups on LDAP
Create initial entries on the LDAP database
Migrate/Syncronize the LDAP database and /etc files
Create, edit and delete Organization Units on LDAP
Create, edit and delete mail aliases and mailing lists on LDAP
Filter users and groups based on OU
Search users and groups
Support for Webmin ACLs
Support for notifications sent from Webmin Users and Groups module
Send notifications as if it were the Webmin standard Users and Groups module (?)

PS: I am a newbie at using SourceForge and CVS. Pelase give me some time to learn how to use all resources availabe. Until them, feel free to send me mail using using the link at the botton of this page. :-)