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LDAP Authentication in Linux
hausmasta writes "HowtoForge has published a walkthrough to show you how to store your users in LDAP and authenticate some of the services against it. It will not show how to install particular packages, as it is distribution/system dependent, instead it will focus on pure configuration of all components needed to have LDAP authentication/storage of users. The howto assumes that you are migrating from a regular passwd/shadow authentication, but it is also suitable for people who do it from scratch."
Maybe you have a brain the size of this guy. I don't know. I have tried a few times in the past to set up LDAP and all the documentation is written by space-aliens as far as I can tell. I can't even penetrate the language used, let alone follow the steps prescribed.
This Fine Article is no different. After about the 3rd sentence I have no idea what is being described, because we're already talking about "a replication" but this has not been defined. It's all like that: undefined terms and references, and exhortations to read the ldap man pages if you want to understand what is going on. The man pages are also full of undefined terms and references, except they are presented in highly-compact text blocks with bad grammar.
LDAP is niche because it is so freaking impossible to figure out. That's why.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.