Today I decided to get back to the servers I bought in the summer. After numerous failed attempts at getting ANY LDAP server software working and client PC's authenticating against it, I put the project on hold for a few months and focused on the SCJP exam. After many many formats I learned a lot about Sun Directory Server 5.2. It's an old Netscape product written in C which Sun rebranded. I think RedHat/Fedora have their own rebranded version of the same product. Sun says it runs on Windows servers, Red Hat Enterprise, SUSE Enterprise and Solaris. Solaris is the only free OS of the four so it was the first OS I tried the directory server on. My hardware wasn't supported and I don't know any of the UNIX commands so I dumped Solaris. I'm using OpenSUSE now. I tried installing with no GUI (gnome or kde) and the directory server won't install properly (library dependancies or something). It will work with OpenSUSE 10.1 and Gnome.

Once I had a working LDAP server and config tool (Sun Administration Console), I wanted to configure PAM so the server could authenticate users against it. I used SUSE's graphical config tool and everything I tried failed. The screens kept talking about OpenLDAP (a different product) and didn't give me many options to configure. When I input what appeared to be correct information it said stuff like "Couldn't connect to server", "feature not supported" etc.. it let me save though. I tried logging in using an LDAP account and it didn't work. I rebooted and it still didn't work. Now I can't even open the settings screen for PAM because it can't connect to the LDAP server. I spent hours on google learning about ldap.conf, PAM, Sun App Server etc.. some places point to Sun's manual. Sun's manual tells you everything you need if you're using Solaris, or tells you to consult your OS's manual if you're using anything else. What an effing head ache. I wonder if I'm going to need to configure certificates, encryption, etc... to get it working. All the sites I went to showed very involved configurations. It's like you need special training to set up LDAP.

It made me think I shouldn't have spent $1300 on the two server computers (total) and should have bought one Sun server complete with Solaris and all the server software pre-installed :) Too bad they are all rackmount servers.. I don't want to buy a $2500 cabinet just for 2 servers.

I need a directory server so I can enable identity management for web services, portal server, and account authentication for various systems I'm installing on the servers. I want central administration of accounts for all my computers too (3 linux, 2 windows). I can't do ANYTHING until I have this effing thing working and I've been on/off it for months. If anyone thinks they can help please email me! If you can come into my computer and make it work, I'll pay you!

I wonder if I had used Red Hat Enterprise or SUSE Enterprise, everything might be super simple. They might have config tools and scripts already made for Sun's software.