Appendix A Quick Start

This appendix is intended for the administrator who wants to use the Directory Server to support basic Netscape server administration. You should read this appendix if the following describes you:

• You just want to get some Netscape server running, such as Enterprise, Messaging, or Collabra Server. That is, you are only using the Directory Server so that Netscape servers have a place to store user and group information.
• You are supporting employees that are close to one another within your network topology, and so network connections are not a major issue for you. That is, you are not trying to support employees across wide area networks, dial-up connections, or over unreliable network feeds between buildings.
• You are supporting a relatively small number of entries (fewer than 10,000).
• You do not want to develop a directory tree structure.

Note. Make sure you have read Chapter  1, "Welcome to the Directory Server," before continuing with this appendix. Chapter  1 contains information about basic Directory Server concepts that you need to understand before performing server installation.

However, for most production directory deployments, the environment is not so idealized as is assumed by this appendix. For this reason, if you are installing your server outside of the lab environment, you are strongly recommended to at least examine the data planning issues discussed in Chapter  3, "Planning Your Directory Data," and the access-control issues raised in Chapter  5, "Planning Security Policies."

In general, if you are deploying your directory service into a production environment, taking an afternoon to become familiar with the concepts and issues raised in the earlier portions this manual will go a long way towards helping you build a robust, secure, easily-administered directory service.

o=<your domain name>

That is, if your enterprise's Internet domain name is Airius.com, then use:

o=airius.com

as your suffix. If you do not have an Internet domain name registered for you enterprise, then simply use your company's name. For example:

o=airius corporation

uid=<some value>, o=airius.com

for people entries, and

cn=<some value>, o=airius.com

for group entries.

To avoid naming collisions, use uid-based distinguished names for all person entries. Netscape servers require that every person entry managed by the servers are defined to have a unique user ID anyway. By using this user ID for your distinguished names, you can elegantly sidestep directory name collisions.

You should choose user IDs that are reasonably human readable; that is, do not use a random collection of letters and/or numbers for your user IDs. If your enterprise already has an email system, one possible solution is to select the left-most value on each person's email address for that person's user ID. That is, if a person has the email address:

bjensen@airius.com

then give that person's directory entry the following DN:

uid=bjensen, o=airius.com

Note. It is recommended that you avoid using meaningless values such as an employee number for the uid. Using non-intuitive user IDs can create administrative burdens for you.

Also, remember that the information contained in a DN is essentially public information; anyone who can search for that entry can see all of the information contained in the DN. For this reason, limit your DNs to generic or public information.

For more information on designing directory trees and DN formats, see Chapter  6, "Directory Tree Design."

For extremely basic installations of the Directory Server, you can install the Directory Server such that it contains both the o=Netscape Root tree and your corporate directory data. However, for most installations, you should seperate the two so that they are two different server instances. Doing so will ease the server upgrade process in the future.

If you are making the configuration directory a seperate server instance from your primary production Directory Server, make sure you install the configuration directory on a port other than 389. Because the configuration directory must be installed first, and because it is difficult to change the port that the configuration directory listens to after other Netscape servers have been installed, it is best to use a non-standard port for this Directory Server instance.

For more information on the configuration directory, see the Netscape Directory Server Installation Guide.

• The first approach is useful if you want to rapidly create a directory with more than a few tens of entries. For mass imports of directory entries, create and import an LDIF file to your Directory Server. LDIF is the LDAP Data Interchange Format, and it allows you to create a flat ASCII file that represents the entries in your directory. This method of directory creation requires that you understand LDIF, the Directory Server schema (that is, the directory data model), and the schema used by the individual Netscape servers.
• A second, easier, but more time-consuming method of directory creation is to create directory entries one by one using a directory gateway such as the Users and Groups area in the Netscape Console. This method of directory creation is useful if you want to create only a few entries at a time.

1. When you install your Directory Server, allow the installation process to create sample directory entries. This will cause the installation process to create a simple database with some simple directory branch points.
2. Use a directory gateway to create a few sample user and group entries. If you are using the messaging server with your directory, make sure to create some user accounts with mail information, as well as some mailing lists.
3. Export your directory to an LDIF file so that you can see the format of the individual sample entries.
4. Use this exported LDIF file as a template for creating your entire directory. Since you are likely to be creating large numbers of directory entries from some other source, such as an HR database, you will probably need to automate the creation of the LDIF file using a scripting language such as PERL.
5. Import your directory from your LDIF file.

LDIF and Directory Server manager usage is described in the Netscape Directory Server Administrator's Guide.