Welcome to the Netscape Directory Server and the Internet. Netscape Communications Corporation is the premier provider of open software that lets people and companies exchange information and conduct commerce over enterprise networks and the Internet.

After you finish planning your directory service, use this manual to install the Netscape Directory Server software components.

Note. This book does not describe installation of the Netscape Directory Server Gateway since the gateway is now automatically installed when the Directory Server is installed. For details on gateway customization and installing the gateway under a stand-alone web server, see the Netscape Gateway Customization Guide.

Sidebar text. Sidebar text marks important information. Make sure you read the information before continuing with a task.

|—The vertical bar is used as a separator for user interface elements. For example, File|New means you should click the File menu and choose New. Server  Status|View Log means you should click the Server Status button in the Server Manager and then click the View Log link.

Throughout this book you will see path references of the form:

<NSHOME>/slapd-<serverID>/...

In these situations, <NSHOME> represents the directory where you installed the server, and <serverID> represents the server identifier you gave the server when you installed it. For example, if you installed your server in /export/ns-home and gave the server an identifier of tango, then the actual path would be:

/export/ns-home/slapd-tango/. . .

Also, all paths specified in this manual are in Unix format. If you are using a Windows NT-based Directory Server, you should assume the Windows NT equivalent file paths whenever Unix file paths are shown in this book.