Mac Geekery

For some time I have been working on a solution for sharing contacts. With LDAP being already supported by most client applications (including Mail, Thunderbird and Outlook) it seems to make perfect sense to store contact information in an LDAP directory. A common problem is getting contact information into an LDAP directory. There are some good web and installed applications which allow the maintenance of an ldap directory. In practice this is a nice solution, although not very practical. Usually one tend to keep contact in ones local Address Book. Many application have the ability to add contact directly to a local Address book, and offering tighter integration, so this is the place where contacts usually end up. The problem is getting them into an ldap directory and keeping them updated.

This is where Address Book X LDAP comes in. At first this project started out as AddressBook2LDAP and transfered the entire AddressBook to an LDAP directory. It's successor, AddressBook4LDAP, allowed the transfer of individuals as well as groups. A year after AddressBook4LDAP, with the advent of Tiger, AddressBook X LDAP came along. In it's current form it transfers contacts from the local Address Book to an LDAP directory in the background. Once the connection is configured in System Preferences the rest takes care of itself. There is a companion tool, Address Book 4 LDAP (v2) which is a LDAP viewer, and can be used to search and browse a LDAP directory.

To get started one needs to configure a LDAP directory on your servers. Fortunately our friends in Cupertino have already included the necessary software with OS X. You don't even need OS X Server, but it can be used as well. To get it up and running on OS X, you need to modify the /etc/openldap/slapd.conf file which contains the directory configuration. Here is a basic example :

Of particular importance are the rootdn, rootpw and suffixparameters. The rootpw can be generated using the slapdpasswd command. Also don't forget to include the abxldap.schema extention as shown in the example. This file is included with the tool. Once you have made the configuration changes to match your situation (domain, user password etc) you can add the launchd configuration file, which is also included with the application package.

At this point you should have the LDAP directory up and running and are now ready to construct the basic structure required to store your shared address book. To do this you need an LDIF file, which is a basic text file in a format which can be imported into the LDAP directory. It it important to at least construct the suffix specified in the slapd.conf file earlier.

Optionally you can also construct your first shared contact by including the next example in the LDIF file as well

Again make the necessary changes to suit your requirements. Be careful not to leave spaces at the end of each line as this will cause errors during the import. The next example shows you how to import the LDIF file into the directory. Note how the rootdn and rootpw from the slapd.conf file are used during this task.

If everything goes well you should see something like this in response

At this point you can search the directory using the ldapsearch command as follows:

This concludes the server installation and it is time to install and configure the clients. Download Address Book X LDAP form j2anywhere.com and install the package on each client. Configure the LDAP connection in ABxLDAP Prefs (System Preferences) as well as the Address Book's Preferences under the LDAP tab.

• Server:The name or IP address of the server running the LDAP directory
• User / BindDN :This is the username and should match the rootdn from the slapd.conf file (eg : cn=ldapadmin,o=j2anywhere,c=gb)
• Password:Matching password. Same as used in rootpw / slapdpasswd
• Context / Search Base:The path / folder / directory / context in which you stored your contacts details. Usually the ou=people is preferred for this

All that is left is to select either the entire Address Book, or individual groups and hit the sync button. The application also comes with detailed instructions, which include some more information which is not included here as well as a demo slideshow.

Project details
Docs in PDA
Demo Slideshow