Is putting slapd into read-only mode sufficient for backups?

[Brian Reichert <reichert@numachi.com>]

I'm curious if the tactics described in this thread are currently
sufficient:

  http://www.openldap.org/lists/openldap-software/200608/msg00152.html

The thread overall suggests the tried-and-true tactic of using
slapcat to extract and LDIF file, to be imported later.  But, our
application's DB if large enough that reimportation is prohibitive.

We're using OpenLDAP 2.3.43 under CentOS 5.7.

What we're doing currently is:

- stopping slapd
- using db_checkpoint and db_archive to manage the BDB logs
- copy away the directory
- restart slapd

This results in a window of time during which the LDAP server is not
available.

My hope was that my managing the olcReadOnly attribute via the
config database (or as that cited message in the thread suggests,
use the monitor database), we could perform those middle two steps
while leaving a RO server in place.

Is that feasible?  Recommended?

-- 
Brian Reichert				<reichert@numachi.com>
BSD admin/developer at large