Create LDAP Server on Ubuntu on Rackspace Cloud Server

Setting up a LDAP Server on Rackspace Cloud Server can be quite painful. Here is a step by step guide to install LDAP on single server. As can be understood, at the time of writing this guide; we are using Ubuntu 14.04 PVHVM version like we did for Installing WordPress on Rackspace Cloud Server. You can read about Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), if need to know the theoretical part.

Why We Need to Create LDAP Server on Ubuntu?

There is not even a single Software as a Service which can rightly solve all the needs for LDAP for all cases. Possibly the reader can recall Active Directory in a Windows environment, it is a database based system that provides authentication, directory, policy, and other services. LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is an application protocol for querying and modifying items in directory service providers like Active Directory, which supports a form of LDAP. Active Directory is a directory services database, and LDAP is one of the protocols you can use to talk to it. LDAP is a standard, Active Directory is Microsoft’s (proprietary) implementation.

LDAP sits on top of the TCP/IP stack and controls internet directory access. It is environment agnostic. There are lots of systems that support LDAP to talk to them, not just Active Directory.

A common usage of LDAP is to provide a “single sign on” where one password for a user is shared between many services, such as applying a company login code to web pages (so that staff log in only once to company computers, and then are automatically logged into the company intranet). There are lot of softwares like Journal Softwares, eCommerce Softwares need LDAP support. We use Open LDAP server on deb Linux :

As it is not very very commonly used Protocol, so far the extended third party free services are limited in number. cPanel possibly do not support LDAP or may be difficult to manage. Although, we are showing installation of LDAP Server on Ubuntu on Rackspace Cloud Server, practically you can use a weak server like from Amazon. The problem starts when the main domain has SSL. Because, normally we will assign :

Installing LDAP Server on Ubuntu on Rackspace Cloud Server

Here are the steps for >Installing LDAP Server on Ubuntu :

You will be asked a series of questions like this, you should go with these options :

Omit OpenLDAP server configuration? No
DNS domain name?
Organization name?
Administrator password?
Database backend to use? HDB
Remove the database when slapd is purged? No
Move old database? Yes
Allow LDAPv2 protocol? No

We will be administering LDAP through a web interface called PHPldapadmin :

You can access by going to your domain name or IP address followed by “/phpldapadmin” :

You will receive a web login prompt with correct Login DN (distinguished name) pre-populated. This guide is on Installing LDAP Server on Ubuntu on Rackspace Cloud Server, we will not discuss the usage here.