bdb backend - reliable or not?

[Tomasz Chmielewski <mangoo@wpkg.org>]

Previously I was using OpenLDAP 2.1.x and 2.2.x with ldbm backend.

I never had problems with it.

As I've read on the list that ldbm support will be dropped in the next 
major version of OpenLDAP, and bdb is the recommended backend, I decided 
to deploy a couple of new OpenLDAP servers with bdb backend.


Unfortunately, the choice was a disaster - a couple of tests showed that 
after powering off the server, OpenLDAP is not able to start anymore - 
all I see in logs is a single message (loglevel 256):

bdb_db_open: unclean shutdown detected; attempting recovery.

And that's it, it never recovers.


I'm using a pretty old OpenLDAP version, 2.3.6, so my first guess is 
that the problems are because of it, and I'm on my way to upgrade.

On the other hand, I didn't have problems with ldbm on 2.3.6, or on any 
older OpenLDAP version, so can one conclude that ldbm is more reliable 
and crash-resistant?

Will an upgrade to 2.3.24 solve my problems with bdb, or shall I revert 
back to ldbm?

Performance is not an issue here, databases are relatively small.
What is important is the ability to survive unexpected system 
crash/poweroff.


--
Tomasz Chmielewski
http://wpkg.org