Author:

François 'fanf' Armand
http://fanf42.blogspot.com
http://normation.com

License:

That project is under ASF 2.0 license, see the 
provided "LICENSE-ASF-2.0.txt" file  or 
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html

Use it at will, but don't complain if it breaks you hdtv. 

Key words

LDAP, Replication, SyncRepl, RFC4533, Java LDAP SDK, Apache DS, UnboundID, Scala, Liftweb, Comet

What is it ?

This application is a show case about how to use two different Java LDAP SDKs to get synchronization information from an LDAP directory, thanks to "SyncRepl" protocol, standardized through RFC 4533, see: http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4533.txt

The two SDK are:

• the Apache DS SDK http://directory.apache.org/ (which is more an internal API for the Apache Directory Server for now, but evolves quickly)

• UnboundId LDAP SDK http://www.unboundid.com/products/ldapsdk, a full feature, pure Java LDAP SDK.

Some more details

For each SDK, we build a service that handle a synchronization connection to a master LDAP server and process synchronization message and controls according to the SyncRepl protocol.

The service allows listener services to be connected to the synchronization service and to receive (decoded) synchronization messages.

For some more fun, the application is fully implemented in Scala 2.8.0, recently released: http://www.scala-lang.org/node/7009

The full application is a Lift web application that show in real-time synchronization message received from the LDAP server in a searchable and sortable HTML grid.

The web application plumbing is implemented as a listener service. This is done with Lift a comet actor, which update a web page in real time with the synchronization information received.

How to test ?

Build tools

This project is coded in Scala, a language running on top of the JVM. You will need the last JDK, see: http://java.sun.com

This project use Maven 2 to manage dependencies for, and to be buit. So if you don't have it yet, see how to install it here: http://maven.apache.org

Test

Now, test:

% mvn jetty:run

That should launch the web application on your http://localhost:8080/

But... wait, you also need an LDAP synchronisation event producer and to configure some properties to connect to it !

Configure properties

default.props configuration file is located in directory src/main/resources/props. Configuration option should be rather well documented, and all in all, you only have 4 mandatory configuration parameter to provide if your LDAP server is on localhost/389:

• Bind DN and password ;
• replication ID you want to use (if you don't have any idea about what to choose, consider using 42, it's a good answer)
• base DN of the search.

Note: if you use a war version of the demo app, you will need to unzip it, and then edit default.props that should be located in WEB-INF/classes directory before rezipping the war. Yes, it's awful, but we all love Java, won't we ?

Install OpenLDAP with syncrepl

• install an OpenLDAP, and add some datas to it. Details of that operation are let as a game for the user ;)

• configure OpenLDAP to be a syncrepl master. See: http://www.openldap.org/doc/admin24/replication.html

For a Debian based distribution it should be as easy as editing the OpenLDAP slapd.conf config file (if your OpenLDAP still use that format), to add:

  ########
  # Load syncrepl dynamic module
  moduleload      syncprov

  ####
  # Add that at the end of a database definition
  ####
  
  #syncrepl provider configuration
  overlay syncprov
  syncprov-checkpoint 100 2
  syncprov-sessionlog 100
  syncprov-reloadhint TRUE

OK, and now restart to test and enjoy simple LDAP replication !