Looking for Strings in the Database After Scrambling

Here, you add an entry for Quentin Cubbins to the example suffix after registering the entry store and fetch plug-in with Directory Server. You see that Quentin’s mail address is no longer visible in the database that holds mail address attribute values.

Before loading the plug-in, delete Quentin’s entry:

$ ldapdelete -D uid=kvaughan,ou=people,dc=example,dc=com -w bribery
 uid=qcubbins,ou=People,dc=example,dc=com

Next, configure Directory Server to load the plug-in as shown in the comments at the beginning of testentry.c, and then restart the server.

With the entry store-fetch plug-in active, add Quentin’s entry back into the directory:

$ ldapmodify -a -h localhost -p 1389 -f quentin.ldif \
-D uid=kvaughan,ou=people,dc=example,dc=com -w bribery

Now search again for strings in the directory database file for the mail attribute values.

Example 9–6 Attribute Values in a Database File After Scrambling

$ cd instance-path/db/example/
$ strings example_mail.db3 | grep example.com
=agodiva@example.com
=hfuddnud@example.com
=pblinn@example.com
=scooper@example.com
=bcubbins@example.com
=yyorgens@example.com

Notice that Quentin’s mail address value is now not visible in the directory database. Directory users who have appropriate access rights, anonymous in this simple example case, can still view the attribute during a search. The attribute and its value are emphasized in the following example.

Example 9–7 Unscrambled Search Results

$ ldapsearch -h localhost -p 1389 -b dc=example,dc=com uid=qcubbins
dn: uid=qcubbins,ou=People,dc=example,dc=com
objectClass: top
objectClass: person
objectClass: organizationalPerson
objectClass: inetOrgPerson
uid: qcubbins
givenName: Quentin
sn: Cubbins
cn: Quentin Cubbins
mail: qcubbins@example.com
secretary: uid=bcubbins,ou=People,dc=example,dc=com

In this way, you see that entry store and entry fetch plug-ins affect only the way entries are stored, not the directory front end.