Re: ::beat head here:: need help sorting out slapadd

[Andrew Findlay <andrew.findlay@skills-1st.co.uk>]

On Wed, Dec 18, 2002 at 08:13:32AM -0500, Stone, Timothy wrote:

> There seems to be a duplication of work by the programs in sbin and bin.
> 
> For instance... what is the difference between ldapadd and slapadd? It seems there are other programs with similar function.

Those two do much the same thing, but with one important difference:

ldapadd (which is actually ldapmodify with the -a flag defaulted on)
adds things to the database via the LDAP protocol. This means that the
server must be running at the time. It also means that it can work
with servers other than slapd, or with slapd used in one of the more
esoteric configurations (e.g. with a relational database or other
special backend)

slapadd contains some functions that really belong to slapd itself,
and it works directly on the underlying database files. Until very
recent versions, this meant that slapadd could only be used with the
slapd process stopped. Historically, slapadd was used for initial
loading of data and was much faster at this than the ldapadd/slapd
combination. Again, recent versions have changed the performance
equation and in many configurations there is not much speed
difference.

It is quite possible to set up and run a slapd server without using
slapadd at all. I generally reccommend that people use 'ldapmodify -a'
for data loading.

Andrew
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|                 From Andrew Findlay, Skills 1st Ltd                 |
| Consultant in large-scale systems, networks, and directory services |
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