Topic: LDAP authentication for SME 7.x question

[bunkobugsy]

Just a quick question for the devs, have read through a few related bugs,
haven't come up with an answer.
What are the chances that a LDAP authentication package (from 8.x repos)
will be available/won't break a 7.5 production server.
Would realy like to see this working asap, need it for a Documentum integration.
I'm not entirely sure this is the way we'll go, AD auth module might do the job.

Thanks.

[janet]

bunkobugsy

What are the chances that a LDAP authentication package (from 8.x repos)
will be available/won't break a 7.5 production server.

I never heard of any plan to backport LDAP.
AFAIK the LDAP implementation requires packages that are in SME8beta5 (Centos 5.4) so therefore these are not available in sme 7.4/7.5 {Centos 4.7/4.8}.

Your most practical answer would be to upgrade to SME8beta5 and use that with the LDAP contrib.
What about problems with using a beta release you say ?
Well sme8.beta5 is reasonably stable, you will likely have less problems using sme8beta5 + LDAP than compared to trying to use sme7.5 and add LDAP to it.
If you want LDAP now, then there is really no choice other than to use sme8beta5.
Remember too that the LDAP implementation is only a partial implementation, so try it out first on a test server to see it fits your needs.

[bunkobugsy]

Ok, you're right. However if I remember correctly when the ideea of LDAP auth started of it was taught for 7.x, even did see wiki page (and forum discussion), wich of course was later modified as every effort is now put in developing 8.0. I know the only way I (and all of us SME users) can take is 8.0, but I'm still waiting for the final release. I'm relying on quite a few contribs (to be exact I don't even know wich are core and wich contribs any more), so I will have too take the cautios road upon upgrading our production (nearly 70 user) server.

Some of them are: BackupPC, coova-chilli, old dhcpmanager, old qmail-notify, hylafax, diskusage, eaccelerator, geoip, mailstats, password, saco-qmHandle, service_control, smbstatus, sme7admin, updates, vacation, wbl all very usefull. Realy wouldn't like to see any of them go away (not to mention core functionalities), so some day soon will have to test SME 8 on a RAID1 copy of the production server in a cloned test setup and help you guys to validate it.

Thanks mary for your quick answer.

[janet]

bunkobugsy

...so some day soon will have to test SME 8 on a RAID1 copy of the production server in a cloned test setup and help you guys to validate it.

Some work has been done, see http://wiki.contribs.org/SME8.0_Contribs_QA
The sooner you start testing and adding your findings to the wiki, then the sooner you can start using sme8.

AFAIR the sme7 implementation of LDAP was a buggy partial test version, not really ready.

[cactus]

AFAIR the sme7 implementation of LDAP was a buggy partial test version, not really ready.

Apart from that it was deamed inappropriate to implement such fundamental changes in a dot release, hence it was postponed to SME Server 8 IIRC.