How to Install OpenLDAP on OpenSUSE Latest

OpenLDAP is an open-source implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) that allows users to store and retrieve information about network resources. In this tutorial, we will walk you through the installation process of OpenLDAP on OpenSUSE Latest.

Before proceeding with the installation, you need to have root access to your server and make sure your system is up-to-date by running the following command in the terminal:

sudo zypper update

Step 1: Install Required Packages

The first step is to install the required packages for OpenLDAP. OpenLDAP itself can be installed with the following command:

sudo zypper install openldap2

In addition to OpenLDAP, we need some tools that are required to manage our directory, such as ldapsearch, ldapmodify, and ldapadd. These tools can be installed with the following command:

sudo zypper install openldap2-client

Step 2: Configure OpenLDAP

Once the packages have been installed, we need to configure OpenLDAP. The main configuration file for OpenLDAP is /etc/openldap/slapd.conf. However, the recommended approach is to use the new cn=config backend, which allows you to configure OpenLDAP dynamically.

To enable cn=config, first create the directory /etc/openldap/slap.d:

sudo mkdir /etc/openldap/slapd.d

Then, copy the default configuration files to this directory:

sudo cp /usr/share/openldap-servers/slapd.ldif /etc/openldap/slapd.d/
sudo cp /usr/share/openldap-servers/DB_CONFIG.example /var/lib/ldap/DB_CONFIG
sudo chown ldap:ldap /var/lib/ldap/DB_CONFIG

Step 3: Start and Enable OpenLDAP

After configuration, we can start OpenLDAP by running the following command:

sudo systemctl start slapd.service

To enable OpenLDAP to start automatically at boot time, run the following command:

sudo systemctl enable slapd.service

Step 4: Verify OpenLDAP Installation

To verify that OpenLDAP is running, you can run the following command:

sudo systemctl status slapd.service

If OpenLDAP is running, you should see a message similar to the following:

slapd.service - OpenLDAP Server Daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/slapd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Fri 2021-06-25 15:43:35 CDT; 39s ago

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have walked you through the process of installing OpenLDAP on OpenSUSE Latest. With OpenLDAP installed, you can now start to manage your directory to store and retrieve information about network resources.