Is it safe to use slapcat for live ldap server backups?

["Marc Rovner" <Marc.Rovner@demandtec.com>]

Greetings folks,

The subject says it all.  Is it safe to use `slapcat` for live ldap
server backups?

The slapcat page doesn't say anything regarding this, and the OpenLDAP
FAQ-O-Matic page at http://www.openldap.org/faq/data/cache/287.html says
rather non-definitely:

     For BDB and HDB, slapcat(8) can generally be used while the
     server is running

The few entries on this list an the Internet I've found, mostly of folks
having problems with backups and slapcat, folks are always asked "Did
you stop theserver before running slapcat?", which any answer I find has
the people saying "Yes".

Does that mean there's a non-zero chance of a mangled backups?  What
situations can't you use slapcat in?

Thanks in advance for your help and advice.

--
								- Marc
David Rovner

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