Re: explicitely asking for unlimited number of results returns the soft limit instead (soft limit=N, hard limit=none) (ITS#3136)

[ando@sys-net.it]

I'm not sure whether this is a bug or a feature.  Regardless of what you
set (i.e. 0 or negative number, like -1) at the client's side, the server
receives 0, which internally means no limit was required.  In fact, -1 is
seen only when the search is performed by the rootdn.

This from a frontend's point of view, which may be questionable, and in
fact I'll leave the final comment to someone else.

>From the limit's point of view, I note from ldapsearch's man page that

       -z sizelimit
              retrieve at most sizelimit entries for a search.  A
              sizelimit  of 0 (zero) removes the ldap.conf limit.
              A server may impose a maximal sizelimit which  only
              the root user may override.

There is no mention of the possibility to set it to a negative value (e.g.
-1) to require that no limits should be set.

Moreover, in RFC2251 4.5.1. Search Request

...
                sizeLimit       INTEGER (0 .. maxInt),
                timeLimit       INTEGER (0 .. maxInt),
...

again there is no mention of the possibility to use a negative value (e.g.
-1) to require that no limit is set.  As a consequence, I'd say that your
requirement cannot be met by slapd's configuration directives because the
protocol, and its current implementation, does not support it.  If you
need to be able, for a certain class of identities, to get a default max
number of entries unless a sizelimit is requested, and this sizelimit to
be set to "none", the only way I see is to use maxInt as sizelimit.

p.

-- 
Pierangelo Masarati
mailto:pierangelo.masarati@sys-net.it




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