chasing referrals with localhost

["Mark Whitehouse" <markwhitehouse@home.com>]

Hi,

I have an LDAP server which has local referrals.  I have configured the
referrals like so:

  dn: ou=devices,dc=foo,dc=com
  ou: devices
  ref: ldap://localhost/ou=devices,dc=foo,dc=com
  objectclass: referral
  objectclass: extensibleObject

Everything works great on the server machine, however when I try to do a
search from a client, the localhost referral is interpreted by the client as
being local to it (and not the server).

An obvious way around this problem would be to change the ref to contain the
host name (or ip addr) of the LDAP server:

  ref: ldap://<hostipaddr>/ou=devices,dc=foo,dc=com

However, I would prefer not to do this if possible.

My question is:  Is this the expected behavior of refs with localhost?  If
it is then localhost does not make much sense in referrals.  I was expecting
either, the server to automatically substitute its address in the ref
returned to the client, or the client to be smart enough to know that the
ref came from server x, so localhost must refer to server x.

In addition, I have read (in Howes, Deploying LDAP.. p.268) that there are
often two ways to 'glue' directories together : referrals and chaining.
Does OpenLDAP support server chaining (whereby the server automatically
follows referrals)?

Thanks,
Mark