OpenLDAP
Related articles
OpenLDAP is an open-source implementation of the LDAP protocol. An LDAP server basically is a non-relational database which is optimised for accessing, but not writing, data. It is mainly used as an address book (for e.g. email clients) or authentication backend to various services (such as Samba, where it is used to emulate a domain controller, or Linux system authentication, where it replaces /etc/passwd
) and basically holds the user data.
This page is a starting point for a basic OpenLDAP installation and a sanity check.
Installation
OpenLDAP contains both a LDAP server and client. Install it with the package openldap.
Configuration
The server
The server configuration file is located at /etc/openldap/slapd.conf
.
Edit the suffix and rootdn. The suffix typically is your domain name but it does not have to be. It depends on how you use your directory. We will use example for the domain name, and com for the tld. The rootdn is your LDAP administrator's name (we will use root here).
suffix "dc=example,dc=com" rootdn "cn=root,dc=example,dc=com"
Now we delete the default root password and create a strong one:
# sed -i "/rootpw/ d" /etc/openldap/slapd.conf #find the line with rootpw and delete it # echo "rootpw $(slappasswd)" >> /etc/openldap/slapd.conf #add a line which includes the hashed password output from slappasswd
You will likely want to add some typically used schemas to the top of slapd.conf
:
include /etc/openldap/schema/cosine.schema include /etc/openldap/schema/inetorgperson.schema include /etc/openldap/schema/nis.schema #include /etc/openldap/schema/samba.schema
You will likely want to add some typically used indexes to the bottom of slapd.conf
:
index uid pres,eq index mail pres,sub,eq index cn pres,sub,eq index sn pres,sub,eq index dc eq
If you plan to use your LDAP server for authentication, you might want to check access control configuration in LDAP authentication#LDAP Server Setup.
Now prepare the database directory. You will need to rename the default config:
# cp /var/lib/openldap/openldap-data/DB_CONFIG.example /var/lib/openldap/openldap-data/DB_CONFIG
To store the recent changes in slapd.conf
to the new /etc/openldap/slapd.d/
configuration settings, we have to delete the old configuration files first, do this every time you change the configuration:
# rm -rf /etc/openldap/slapd.d/*
(if you do not have a database yet, you might need to create one by starting and stopping the slapd.service
using systemd )
Then we generate the new configuration with:
# slaptest -f /etc/openldap/slapd.conf -F /etc/openldap/slapd.d/
The above command has to be run every time you change slapd.conf
. Check if everything succeeded. Ignore message "bdb_monitor_db_open: monitoring disabled; configure monitor database to enable".
Change ownership recursively on the new files and directory in /etc/openldap/slapd.d:
# chown -R ldap:ldap /etc/openldap/slapd.d
Finally, start the slapd daemon with slapd.service
using systemd.
The client
The client config file is located at /etc/openldap/ldap.conf
.
It is quite simple: you will only have to alter BASE
to reflect the suffix of the server, and URI
to reflect the address of the server, like:
/etc/openldap/ldap.conf
BASE dc=example,dc=com URI ldap://localhost
If you decide to use SSL:
- The protocol (ldap or ldaps) in the
URI
entry has to conform with the slapd configuration - If you decide to use self-signed certificates, add a
TLS_REQCERT allow
line toldap.conf
- If you use a signed certificate from a CA, add the line
TLS_CACERTDIR /usr/share/ca-certificates/trust-source
inldap.conf
.
Create initial entry
Once your client is configured, you probably want to create the root entry, and an entry for the root role:
$ ldapadd -x -D 'cn=root,dc=example,dc=com' -W dn: dc=example,dc=com objectClass: dcObject objectClass: organization dc: example o: Example description: Example directory dn: cn=root,dc=example,dc=com objectClass: organizationalRole cn: root description: Directory Manager ^D
The text after the first line is entered on stdin, or could be read from a file either with the -f option or a file redirect.
Test your new OpenLDAP installation
This is easy, just run the command below:
$ ldapsearch -x '(objectclass=*)'
Or authenticating as the rootdn (replacing -x
by -D <user> -W
), using the example configuration we had above:
$ ldapsearch -D "cn=root,dc=example,dc=com" -W '(objectclass=*)'
Now you should see some information about your database.
OpenLDAP over TLS
If you access the OpenLDAP server over the network and especially if you have sensitive data stored on the server you run the risk of someone sniffing your data which is sent clear-text. The next part will guide you on how to setup an SSL connection between the LDAP server and the client so the data will be sent encrypted.
In order to use TLS, you must have a certificate. For testing purposes, a self-signed certificate will suffice. To learn more about certificates, see OpenSSL.
Create a self-signed certificate
To create a self-signed certificate, type the following:
$ openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -out slapdcert.pem -keyout slapdkey.pem -days 365
You will be prompted for information about your LDAP server. Much of the information can be left blank. The most important information is the common name. This must be set to the DNS name of your LDAP server. If your LDAP server's IP address resolves to example.org but its server certificate shows a CN of bad.example.org, LDAP clients will reject the certificate and will be unable to negotiate TLS connections (apparently the results are wholly unpredictable).
Now that the certificate files have been created copy them to /etc/openldap/ssl/
(create this directory if it does not exist) and secure them.
slapdcert.pem
must be world readable because it contains the public key. slapdkey.pem
on the other hand should only be readable for the ldap user for security reasons:
# mv slapdcert.pem slapdkey.pem /etc/openldap/ssl/ # chmod -R 755 /etc/openldap/ssl/ # chmod 400 /etc/openldap/ssl/slapdkey.pem # chmod 444 /etc/openldap/ssl/slapdcert.pem # chown ldap /etc/openldap/ssl/slapdkey.pem
Configure slapd for SSL
Edit the daemon configuration file (/etc/openldap/slapd.conf
) to tell LDAP where the certificate files reside by adding the following lines:
# Certificate/SSL Section TLSCipherSuite DEFAULT TLSCertificateFile /etc/openldap/ssl/slapdcert.pem TLSCertificateKeyFile /etc/openldap/ssl/slapdkey.pem
If you are using a signed SSL Certificate from a certification authority such as Let’s Encrypt, you will also need to specify the path to the root certificates database and your intermediary certificate. You will also need to change ownership of the .pem
files and intermediary directories to make them readable to the user ldap
:
# Certificate/SSL Section TLSCipherSuite DEFAULT TLSCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/ldap.my-domain.com/cert.pem TLSCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/ldap.my-domain.com/privkey.pem TLSCACertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/ldap.my-domain.com/chain.pem TLSCACertificatePath /usr/share/ca-certificates/trust-source
The TLSCipherSuite specifies a list of OpenSSL ciphers from which slapd will choose when negotiating TLS connections, in decreasing order of preference. In addition to those specific ciphers, you can use any of the wildcards supported by OpenSSL. NOTE: DEFAULT is a wildcard. See man ciphers
for description of ciphers, wildcards and options supported.
Regenerate the configuration directory:
# rm -rf /etc/openldap/slapd.d/* # erase old config settings # slaptest -f /etc/openldap/slapd.conf -F /etc/openldap/slapd.d/ # generate new config directory from config file # chown -R ldap:ldap /etc/openldap/slapd.d # Change ownership recursively to ldap on the config directory
Start slapd with SSL
You will have to edit slapd.service
to change to protocol slapd listens on.
Create the override unit:
systemctl edit slapd.service
[Service] ExecStart= ExecStart=/usr/bin/slapd -u ldap -g ldap -h "ldaps:///"
Localhost connections do not need to use SSL. So, if you want to access the server locally you should change the ExecStart
line to:
ExecStart=/usr/bin/slapd -u ldap -g ldap -h "ldap://127.0.0.1 ldaps:///"
Then restart slapd.service
. If it was enabled before, reenable it now.
Next steps
You now have a basic LDAP installation. The next step is to design your directory. The design is heavily dependent on what you are using it for. If you are new to LDAP, consider starting with a directory design recommended by the specific client services that will use the directory (PAM, Postfix, etc).
A directory for system authentication is the LDAP authentication article.
A nice web frontend is phpLDAPadmin.
Troubleshooting
slapd configuration checking
You can check config settings with
$ slaptest -f /etc/openldap/slapd.conf -v
Client authentication checking
If you cannot connect to your server for non-secure authentication
$ ldapsearch -x -H ldap://ldaservername:389 -D cn=Manager,dc=example,dc=exampledomain
and for TLS secured authentication with:
$ ldapsearch -x -H ldaps://ldaservername:636 -D cn=Manager,dc=example,dc=exampledomain
LDAP server stops suddenly
If you notice that slapd seems to start but then stops, try running:
# chown -R ldap:ldap /var/lib/openldap
to allow slapd write access to its data directory as the user "ldap".
LDAP server does not start
Try starting the server from the command line with debugging output enabled:
# slapd -u ldap -g ldap -h ldaps://ldaservername:636 -d Config,Stats
See also
- Official OpenLDAP Software 2.4 Administrator's Guide
- phpLDAPadmin is a web interface tool in the style of phpMyAdmin.
- LDAP authentication
- apachedirectorystudioAUR from the Arch User Repository is an Eclipse-based LDAP viewer. Works perfect with OpenLDAP installations.