General LDAP/OpenLDap Questions

["Brian J. Burke" <brian.burke@rti-world.com>]

Greetings,

I have been tasked with setting up an LDAP server
as a company-wide address book and source of authentication.
Currently, I am testing the OpenLDAP server.  The two major
problems I am running into are:

1) Documentation
2) Client side administration/data entry

I have been looking over a number of resources available
over the net and piecing together what needs to be done.
I've referenced the documentation for OpenLDAP, IBM's
Understanding LDAP redbook, various snippets of documentation
for pam_ldap, samba's ldap authentication, various RFC's
pertaining to LDAP and it's use for storing system info,
authentication info, et cetera.

I believe I have a pretty good picture of how things work,
and a pretty solid understanding of LDAP in general.  What
I'm looking for is something to glue all of this together.
I've seen sample LDIF files packed with the Samba and
Pam_ldap docs that outline some of the attributes needed
to implement those systems, and browsed over the schema
viewer pointed to via the OpenLDAP FaqOMatic.  However,
I was hoping there might be a few kind souls who have
established or are working to establish, something
similiar, and are willing to share their experience.

In particular, I'd like to take a peek at attribute,
objectclass, and ACL setups under OpenLdap.  Especially
those implementing supporting objectclasses for Pam_Ldap
and Samba's LDAP authentication.  I've been browsing most
of the major LDAP sites, but haven't been able to digest
100% of it yet.  If someone has a URL to a HOWTO or something
similiar, that would be especially keen.

Ideally, an administrative type would be able to handle the
data entry and maintenance of the info contained in OpenLdap.
However, the options I have explored so far (mostly opensource)
have not been easy or robust enough for practical implementation.
I've checked the various client listings from the OpenLdap and U o M
LDAP pages, GQ, KLDap, and two of the web gateways out there.
Unfortunately, customizing or designing our own solution is
not within the realm of possibility at the moment, so I'm looking
for something that's already been done.  Any suggestions, commerical
or otherwise?

>From looking over Netscape's server, it looks like there are some decent
administrative tools.  I'm currently researching Netscape's server
for this reason (both for content management, and administering the
server and it's replicas).

Any pointers at all would be greatly appreciated, thanks for your time!:>

= Brian J. Burke, -*- brian.burke@rti-world.com -*-
= Technical Staff, Ricciardi Technologies, Inc. (GS-35F-0014J)