Subject: LDAP Integration - Pine4.61 - RH Linux

From: Steve Lowe <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 11:34:11 -0600 (CST)

Good morning,

We are making our first attempt at LDAP integration.

I have defined a DIRECTORY SERVER:

    ldap-server:   wa.aurora.edu
    search-base:   ou=People,dc=aurora,dc=edu
    port:          389
    Nickname:      LDAP Server

When I attempt to connect using Pine4.61 to the LDAP server, I get
the following error message:

    Protocol error:  requested version not allowed

In checking the technical notes, it appears that I have a conflict
between a V2 and V3 LDAP server and that Pine only supports a V2
LDAP server environment.

My questions are:

   A.  Have I identified the LDAP server to PINE?

   B.  How do I access a V3 server?  Or can I?

Thanks in advance.

  -- Steve Lowe
     Information Services
     Aurora University
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From: Steve Hubert <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 17:16:11 -0800 (PST)

>    A.  Have I identified the LDAP server to PINE?

I think so.

>    B.  How do I access a V3 server?  Or can I?

Sorry, pine only knows V2, no solution in pine. It may be possible to 
reconfigure the server to support both V3 and V2.

Steve Hubert <[email-masked]>
Univ. of Washington: Computing and Communications, Seattle

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From: Kolbjørn Barmen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 01:37:18 +0100 (CET)

> reconfigure the server to support both V3 and V2.

At least not a problem with OpenLDAP.

An issue that keep annoying me is that there's no way to tell pine to
convert the answer from the LDAP server to local charset. The output from
LDAP is always UTF8.

-- 
Kolbjørn Barmen
UNINETT Driftsenter

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From: Steve Hubert <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 16:55:32 -0800 (PST)

> convert the answer from the LDAP server to local charset. The output from

Version 3 output should be UTF-8, but version 2 should be ISO-8859-1, I 
think. The reason that pine can't handle V3 is that it doesn't know what 
to do with the UTF-8. We could convert it to a local character set but we 
keep thinking that we'll have a more general solution and use UTF-8 
internally at some point. Since OpenLDAP supports V2 or V3 we haven't 
taken this step. The LDAP server ought to be doing the conversion before 
it sends to pine because pine asks for V2.

Steve

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From: Kolbjørn Barmen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 13:04:47 +0100 (CET)

On Thu, 18 Nov 2004, Steve Hubert wrote:

> think.

That's not quite true. LDAPv3 _is_ UTF-8, for LDAPv2 charset seems
undefined, but historically it should actually be T.61 for X500
compatibility.  Ofcourse most LDAPv2 servers today would be using either
local encoding (definetly not necessary ISO-8859-1) or UTF-8.

> The reason that pine can't handle V3 is that it doesn't know what
> internally at some point.

Well, will support for LDAPv2 be replaced with support for LDAPv3, or will
it LDAPv3 support be added? For proper LDAPv2 support, Pine itself should
be able to deal with the charsets. IMO there should be a setting in the 
"ADD/EDIT DIRECTORY SERVER" windows that lets the user specify what
charset encoding the given server is using, and any LDAP queries to this
server should be done using this encoding.

> Since OpenLDAP supports V2 or V3 we haven't taken this step. The LDAP
> server ought to be doing the conversion before it sends to pine because
> pine asks for V2.

The conversion to what? The LDAP server doesnt know what charset the
client is using, and the client has no way of telling the LDAP server.
It is much easier for the client to have a clue on what encoding a certain
server uses.

-- 
Kolbjørn Barmen
UNINETT Driftsenter

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From: Steve Hubert <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 08:55:09 -0800 (PST)

> server should be done using this encoding.

What you say makes a lot of sense.

As you can tell, we haven't given a lot of thought to LDAP in some time. 
The old code has just remained as it was. Hopefully we can get some time 
to come up with a plan. Thanks!

Steve