blog/data/2009-03-29-ldap-schema-needed.txt

   1 Title: Time to replace the LDAP schemas in RFC 2307
   2 Tags: nuug, english, debian edu, debian
   3 Date: 2009-03-29 12:00
   4 Publish: 2010-01-01
   5
   6 The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from optimal.
   7 In Debian Edu, we would like to store information about users, SMB
   8 clients/hosts, filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS
   9 configuration, and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a
  10 lot in common, but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to
  11 have one object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least
  12 three LDAP objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related
  13 stuff, one with DNS information and another with DHCP information.  In
  14 addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for netgroup
  15 membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.  I believe
  16 it is time for a few RFC specifications to cleam up this mess.  The
  17 old RFC 2307 do not scale when it comes to netgroups, and the schema
  18 used by DNS servers and DHCP servers do not integrate properly with
  19 RFC 2307 and each other.
  20
  21 I would like to have one computer object representing each computer in
  22 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
  23 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
  24 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.
  25
  26 I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or computer
  27 and to the net group this user or computer is a member.
  28
  29 Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself in
  30 this regard.  Time to start a new IETF work goup?