BLAG Ramblings of a crazy old fool

LDAP/eDirectory

So, this week I developed a PHP authentication schema using the LDAP functions. This was designed as a modular component, to be reusable throughout further web applications. Also means it's nice and portable. I don't have the code here at the moment, but when I do I'll release. Basically, our script connects to your NDS eDirectory server, and binds anonymously. To incorporate context-less logons, we then search for the provided username (cn) in your organization's tree.

Due to the nature of ldap_search(), you can also use this to require users from a certain tree; aka only your staff (no students), etc. This is just done by specifying OUs. eDirectory requires a TLS connection for encryption between the webserver requesting the LDAP info and the eDirectory server itself. This is nice; provided that you have an SSL connection to the page where your authentication sits, your security is already done for you! passwords will not be sent in plaintext between the NDS and web servers.

This script would be especially useful to those building web applications for use in a Novell environment, but with a few modifications it could work with other LDAP schemas too, including MS Active Directory.

In other news, I reapplied to join Indy Powerplant, and I'm planning on going to the Stompfest LAN Party on Mar 29-30.