Subject: LDAP NSS for NetBSD
To: None <tech-userlevel@netbsd.org>
From: Timshel Knoll-Miller <timshel@shels.net>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 02/20/2005 22:29:09
[please CC me all replies, I'm not subscribed]

Hi,

I'm not entirely sure that this is the right list - I'm fairly new to 
NetBSD...

I'm thinking about writing a BSD licensed LDAP nss backend for NetBSD 
-current's modular nsswitch. I know about padl's nss-ldap module, but it 
is is under the GPL and also needs to be ported to use the BSD NSS API, 
which is different to glibc and other implementations (which, AFAICT, 
seem to look for symbols in the module named "_nss_<source>_<function>" 
with the published prototype of <function>).

Porting shouldn't really be too difficult, but neither should a 
re-implementation. While I'm at it, I'm considering adding backend 
databases for services and protocols (get{serv,proto}by*),  and 
reentrant versions of getpwent and friends, which don't seem to have 
been implemented yet (only the get*nam() have?).

Has anyone else done any work on this stuff? I'm interested to hear what 
people think of it, and any advice or ideas regarding the implementation 
of the ldap backend. Also, as I'm new to coding NetBSD any advice or 
pointers to development documents would be appreciated.

Faithfully,

Timshel

-- 
Timshel Knoll-Miller <timshel@shels.net>