Set up your LDAP server on Ubuntu 10.04

So lately I’ve been covering some pretty sweet LDAP tools. You’ve seen “Manage your LDAP data with phpLDAPAdmin“, “Access and manage your LDAP data with Luma“, and “Set up an LDAP server on Fedora“. Although the last entry showed you how to get a server up and running with the 389 Directory Server GUI, none of these articles have touched on the tried and true text-based installation and setup of the slapd LDAP server. And that is exactly what we are going to do here.

But here’s the thing – the slapd server can be a real pain to set up. It didn’t used to be. The old fashion way was to install slapd and then edit the /etc/ldap/slapd.conf file to suite your needs. Thing is, the slapd.conf configuration file has been deprecated and now, trying to figure out how to configure slapd is like finding the proverbial needle in the proverbial haystack. Fortunately, in my desperate scouring to work out an easy method of doing this, I have found some tools to make the job easier. And that’s what this article is all about, getting slapd up and running on a Ubuntu machine so you too can have LDAP running.