Example of an Indirect CoS

Indirect CoS names an attribute in the cosIndirectSpecifier attribute to locate the template specific to each target. The template entry for indirect CoS may be any entry in the directory, including other user entries. This example indirect CoS uses the manager attribute of the target entry to identify the CoS template entry. The template entry is the manager’s user entry. The manager’s user entry contains the value of the attribute to generate. The value is that of departmentNumber in this case.

The following command creates the indirect CoS definition entry, which contains the cosIndirectDefinition object class:

$ ldapmodify -a -h host1 -p 1389 -D cn=admin,cn=Administrators,cn=config -w -
dn: cn=generateDeptNum,ou=People,dc=example,dc=com
objectclass: top
objectclass: LDAPsubentry
objectclass: cosSuperDefinition
objectclass: cosIndirectDefinition
cosIndirectSpecifier: manager
cosAttribute: departmentNumber

Next, add the cosTemplate object class to the template entries, and make sure that they define the attribute to be generated. In this example, all manager entries are templates:

$ ldapmodify -h host1 -p 1389 -D cn=admin,cn=Administrators,cn=config -w -
dn: cn=Carla Fuentes,ou=People,dc=example,dc=com
changetype: modify
add: objectclass
objectclass: cosTemplate
-
add: departmentNumber
departmentNumber: 318842

With this CoS, target entries (the entries under ou=People,dc=example,dc=com) that contain the manager attribute automatically have the department number of their manager. The departmentNumber attribute is computed on the target entries because it does not exist in the server. However, the departmentNumber attribute is returned as part of the target entry. For example, if Babs Jensen’s manager is defined to be Carla Fuentes, her department number is the following:

$ ldapsearch -h host1 -p 1389 -D cn=admin,cn=Administrators,cn=config -w - \
 -b "ou=People,dc=example,dc=com" -s sub "(cn=*Jensen)"
dn: cn=Babs Jensen,ou=People,dc=example,dc=com
cn: Babs Jensen
...
manager: cn=Carla Fuentes,ou=People,dc=example,dc=com
departmentNumber: 318842