[Evolution] Re: Evolution and OpenLDAP

[Greg Kerdemelidis <greg advance-enterprise com>]

Hi Dieter! I have just finished doing exactly what you require.

We have OpenLDAP (v2.0.23, I think -- whatever comes with RH 7.3) and
evolution 1.0.8 in the office. It was decided that a central repository
of contact information was required, and that a nice interface be
presented to the users. Evolution was selected for the obvious reasons.
Then came my fun...

OK. I dug around for a while and eventually found evolutionPerson.schema
on the net. Copy the schema to /etc/openldap/schema/. Edit
/etc/openldap/slapd.conf to contain the line:

"include  /etc/openldap/schema/evolutionperson.schema"

I also disabled all the ACLs for the moment, and just use this one (in
the same file):

access to *
        by self write
        by users write
        by anonymous read
        by * read

Very simple and not so secure, and since evolution won't present you
with the option of editting any fields unless you authenticate with
LDAP, this ACL doesn't really do anything. It's still important to have
something, however.

Make sure you set up your 'rootdn' and 'suffix' entries in slapd.conf to
reflect your organization. Good information about setting up a simple
ldap repository can be found at
http://www.openldap.org/doc/admin/quickstart.html. I just followed that
guide for a little bit to get it basically populated.

Another really good tool to use is the LDAP Browser (and Editor). It is
a java tool that can simplify the management and initial population of a
repository. Not sure where I grabbed it, sorry, but it can be too hard
to find...

You will need to create some users apart from the manager account. I
just created a couple of .ldif files using a text editor. For example,
my .ldif entry consisted of:

dn: uid=greg,ou=staff,dc=advance-enterprise,dc=com
objectclass: top
objectclass: person
objectclass: organizationalPerson
objectclass: inetOrgPerson
objectclass: evolutionPerson
uid: greg
cn: Greg Kerdemelidis
givenname: Greg
sn: Kerdemelidis
mobile: 027123456
o: Genix Systems Ltd
description: Chief Alchemist
userPassword: a-password-123
homePhone: 039123456
homePostalAddress: 10 Gilby Street, Avonside
mail: greg advance-enterprise com
mail: gkerde hotmail com
note: This is a note field.

Bear in mind that you need to create the
ou=staff,dc=advance-enterprise,dc=com branch first. Refer to the
openldap docs for the procedure for this.

Next, fire up evolution. In the Tools > Addressbook sources... item, add
a new location. Enter in the details for the addressbook
(ou=blah,dc=...). You want to Authenticate using DN. Enter the full DN
for your user (uid=greg,ou=staff,dc=advan...) and the password. You will
probably have to enter some of the details in twice, as evolution is a
bit flakey at remembering them.

You can drag-and-drop contacts into the database, and then edit them
using evo. All good.

We had a huge collection of contacts from Office 97. You will need some
sort of tool to convert the contacts en masse, I would guess. That's out
of the scope of this email. I played with my Perls.

Sorry for the length of this message, but Dieter is dead right -- there
isn't a huge amount of info out there in one place. I thought I'd write
it all down while it's still fresh.

Hope this helps!

-Greg



-- BEGIN ORIGINAL MESSAGE ----------------

Hello,

Adam Williams <awilliam whitemice org> writes:

> > > Where can I find some kind of documentation (howto, faq, whatever)
about
> > > LDAP connectivity? How can I add new contacts through evolution to
ldap?
> > > (tried to make defaultaccess write, and so;)
> > Welcome to the club :-)
> > I raised that question the other day. There ist allmost no
> > documentation available. 
> > Try to get hold of evolutionperson.schema, I found it in the tarball
> > of evolution.1.1.0.99.tar.gz but not in the rpm binary package and
> > create your own database.
>
> There is an evolution section in
> ftp://kalamazoolinux.org/pub/pdf/ldapv3.pdf

I found your slides 69 and 146-150 quite informative but I missed
examples, or at least hints, how to create an initial database for
evolution. By the way, evolutionperson.schema ist not applicable to
openldap-2.1.x anymore.

-Dieter