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Re: Ang. RE: Bdb defaults - WAS: problem importing entries.

You see, one approach I sometimes favour (and I've been working towards
this in ACLs, for instance) is not to have any defaults.  All legal
parameters MUST be present in a configuration file, and implementations
shoudl bail out if any is absent; issues may arise when parameters are
incompatible, but some crafting should allow this to be worked out (e.g.
allowing a value of "undefined" for those that are incompatible).  Of
course, users should be given up-to-date templates to start with, so they
don't really have to read ALL about ANY parameter to be able to simply
"give it a try".  I think defaults really make things tricky, because they
hide a lot of knowlegde about what can be important and even about how
things behave, and then one always needs to remember (or look up) default
values; this approach would really make things simpler, because everything
would be in the slapd.conf.  Would you consider this a better approach?

p.

> I think Dan has very valid points here
>
> I never understood why the openldap developers shy away from providing
> sensible defaults or example configurations
> Sometimes that attitude can appear like a form of technical arrogance, but
> popular reasons quoted for their approach seem to be
> - RTFM,  things are documented somewhere, you just need to read it all
> - defaults would not reduce traffic on the list
> - we cannot cover all te possible systems and uses of openldap anyway
> - a false sense of security and accomplishment for beginners would be
> created that would in the long run cause more problems for everyone
> - etc.etc
>
> well as far as I am concerned reasonable defaults (and a few working
> examples) would NOT discurage me from reading the documentation
> It would rather flatten the learning curve a bit by leading beginners to a
> working (example) setup faster.
> Apart from beeing so incouraged to continue openldap discovery (instead of
> beeing turned away by common traps that many beginners seem to fall into),
> beginners then would also know better where to look in the documentation
> to continue to tune/adapt the (already working) openldap system to their
> needs
>
> Mind you, for a beginner it is not only the question _how_ to tune a
> parameter, but often also _which_ parameter to begin with. Reasonable
> defaults and example configurations could act as great pointers to the
> documentation to continue the openldap learning process (with positive
> feedback instead of negative)
>
> We should ask quanah to publish the (non-stanford) traffic figures on his
> excellent openldap documentation site.  These would likely strengthen my
> point
> Am I running my system like stanford does? NO. Did quanahs documentation
> teach me a lot about openldap that I couldn't learn myself (in reasonable
> time) from the docs? YES
>
> There _is_ a need for sensible defaults and working examples, and I only
> see benefits for developing and publishing these.
>
> -frank
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> "Armbrust, Daniel C." <Armbrust.Daniel@mayo.edu>
> Sänt av: owner-openldap-software@OpenLDAP.org
> 04-06-14 21.45
>
> Till
> openLDAP-software@OpenLDAP.org
> Kopia
>
> Ärende
> RE: Bdb defaults - WAS: problem importing entries.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Well, the difference I would note there, is that mySQL is optional and
> experimental.  Bdb is suggested as the primary database backend for most
> users.  It seems to me that the app out of the box should be at least
> configured for an average use case.
>
> And I wasn't suggesting that we move the configuration back into the
> slapd.conf file.  I am simply wondering why openldap doesn't pick better
> defaults for the case where there is no DB_CONFIG file (which is what most
> new people do when they don't yet understand openldap)  It sounds like
> openldap is falling back on the Berkeley defaults, which have been said to
> be inappropriate for openldap.
>
> My other suggestion is that some example DB_CONFIG files be provided -
> either prominently on the website, or along with server itself.  For what
> most people want to do, referring them to the Berkeley documentation is
> very overwhelming.  We don't need to rewrite/copy all of Berkeley's
> information... Just provide some reasonable defaults for the most often
> adjusted variables.  Then people will have a clue at what documentation to
> look at specifically, when they want to tweak things themselves.
> Currently, this is not straight forward at all, as no new users of
> openldap are going to understand the ramifications of the very technical
> documentation written on the Berkeley site.
>
> Which leads directly to a lot of mail here... Why does it perform
> horribly, how do I configure this.
>
> Dan
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-openldap-software@OpenLDAP.org
> [mailto:owner-openldap-software@OpenLDAP.org] On Behalf Of Andreas
> Sent: Monday, June 14, 2004 2:20 PM
> To: openLDAP-software@OpenLDAP.org
> Subject: Re: Bdb defaults - WAS: problem importing entries.
>
> On Mon, Jun 14, 2004 at 12:19:01PM -0500, Armbrust, Daniel C. wrote:
>> This (and many other recent threads) leads me to ask the question, why
>> doesn't openldap provide more reasonable defaults for bdb, if no
> DB_CONFIG
>> file is present?
>
> Uh oh, you are asking for trouble with this question :)
>
> Read here:
> http://www.openldap.org/faq/data/cache/1074.html
>
> Think about it like this: what if openldap used MySQL as the backend,
> should it include
> detailed instructions on how to setup MySQL? It could, but should it?
>
>


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


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