Chapter 1. Introduction

The main purpose of this document is to set up and use a LDAP Directory Server on your Linux machine.You will learn how to install, configure, run and maintain the LDAP server. After you also learn how you can store, retrieve and update information on your Directory using the LDAP clients and utilities. The daemon for the LDAP directory server is called slapd and it runs on many different UNIX platforms.

There is another daemon that cares for replication between LDAP servers. It's called slurpd and for the moment you don't need to worry about it. In this document you will run a slapd which provides directory service for your local domain only, without replication, so without slurpd. Complete information about replication is available at: OpenLDAP Administrator's Guide

The local domain setup represents a simple choice for configuring your server, good for starting and easy to upgrade to another configuration later if you want. The information presented on this document represents a nice initialization on using the LDAP server. Possibly after reading this document you will feel encouraged to expand the capabilities of your server and even write your own clients, using the already available C, C++ and Java Development Kits.