Introduction
In this step-by-step walkthrough, you will install and configure the CentOS Directory Server on Centos 5.5 running as a guest OS on VMware Workstation 7.1. The CentOS Directory Server is the CentoOS distribution of the 389 Directory Server [10], which is an open source LDAP server for Linux. The Red Hat documentation provides all necessary information on LDAP [5], but can be challenging to quickly and productively review. A number of online tutorials are also available [3, 4, 6], and the best one that I was able to identify is available at neddix.com [7]. My step-by-step walkthrough retraces the steps presented in the neddix.com tutorial, with some minor modifications, updates, and additional detail and appropriate referencing helpful to those new to LDAP implementation. Note that it assumes the use of the Gnome interface. Total time to completion is about 2 hours. Good luck!
Procedure
Step 1: Configure Networking
On the
Gnome panel, select
System, and then select
Network.
The
Network Configuration tool opens.
On the Network Configuration tool, select the target device, and then click
Edit. The
Ethernet Device tool appears.
Configure the usual network items, and then click
OK. The Ethernet Device tool closes, and you are returned to the Network Configuration tool. On the Network Configuration tool, select the
DNS tab.
Enter the
Hostname that you want for your network. For this walkthrough, the hostname is:
centos1.corp.local
Jot down what your hostname and domain name are, as you'll need these data later, when you perform a setup and configuration of CentOS Directory Server. Don't worry about the DNS entries - anything you enter here will be reset anyway when you reset the Network service. Then, from the
File menu, select
Save.
Click
OK, and then exit the Network Configuration tool. On the Gnome panel, point to System, then point to Server Settings, and then select Services.
TIP: if you did not install the Server GUI package, during CentOS install, you will not see the Server Settings submenu. Instead, the Services menu item will simply be grouped under the System menu.
The
Service Configuration tool appears. Scroll down until you see the network item. Select this item.
Click the
Restart button. After a few moments, a message will appear.
Click OK. Now, return to the Network Configuration tool, and then select the DNS tab again.
Enter the appropriate DNS data, and then select
Save from the
File menu again. At the prompt, click
OK. And you'll need to restart the Network service again, like you did previously. Once you've done these things, test your configuration. First, open a terminal, and then enter:
hostname
which returns the machine's hostname, and then
hostname -f
which returns the machine's fully qualified domain name. You should see the following:
Now enter the following:
ping -c 1 localhost
followed by
ping -c 1 centos1.corp.local
Either command sends a single ICMP echo request. You should get something like the following.
Running these commands helps determine whether the machine's DNS settings have been properly configured.
TIP: to get quick help on these and other standard UNIX commands, just enter:
man [command]
This completes network configuration. In the next very quick step, you'll enable the time service.
Step 2: Enable Network Time Protocol Service
Go to the Services tool, and then scroll down until you see the
ntpd service item. Check this item.
Click the
Start button. After a few moments, the startup process will complete, and the Status panel will be updated.
This completes the network time protocol service startup. In the next step, you will configure temporary security settings to allow you to install the necessary software. These will be modified again later.
Step 3: Disable Firewall and SELinux
On the Gnome panel, click on System, and then click Security Level and Firewall. On the
Firewall Options tab, make sure that
Firewall has been set to
Disabled.
And then on the
SELinux tab, make sure that the
SELinux Setting has been set to
Disabled.
Then click
OK.
Click
Yes. This completes security settings configuration. In the next step, you will create a new account for use by the LDAP service.
Step 4: Create LDAP Service Account
On the
Gnome panel, select
System, point to Administration, and then select
Users and Groups. The User Manager tool appears.
Click
Add User. The Create New User tool appears. Enter the appropriate information.
Click
OK. The tool closes, and you are returned to User Manager. The
sysadmin account will now be listed.
This completes setup of the LDAP server service account. In the next step, you will check on OpenJDK installation and install it if need be.
Step 5: Install OpenJDK
First, let's check to see whether openjdk has already been installed. You can do this using rpm commands or using the Package Manager GUI tool. Let's try from the command line first. At the terminal, try this:
rpm -qa | grep openjdk
This searches through all of the packages for the search string
openjdk. If this command returns nothing then the package hasn't been installed. Otherwise, it will return the the package name and version.
NOTE: if, during your initial CentOS installation, you performed an install of the Server and Server GUI packages, the openjdk package will already have been installed for you, since it comes as part of the Server package group.
As of this walkthrough, the latest version of
openjdk was 1.6.0, but your version may vary.
Next, let's use the GUI tool to determine whether openjdk has already been installed.
Open the
Package Manager tool. On the
Search tab, perform a search on the string
JDK. Scroll down the list of search results and look for the
OpenJDK Runtime Environment item.
If it's not checked, go ahead and check it now for installation. Once you check it, the
Apply button is enabled, and clicking the Apply button launches the installation of all checked packages.
You can also install it from the command line like this:
yum install java-1.6.0-openjdk
where your version number may vary. After installing
openjdk, do the following check to make sure the libraries have been appropriately installed and configured. Enter the following:
/usr/sbin/alternatives --config java
This finds all of the java versions available on your machine. You may find more than one available. What's important is that a version is available that matches the one you installed and that this is the default version. CentOS Directory Server requires OpenJDK or Sun JDK. Make sure that one of these is the default.
This completes JDK installation. In the next step, you'll check on
openssl installation and if it's not installed, install it.
Step 6: Install SSL
As in step 5, there are a couple of ways of determining whether a package has already been installed, either from the command line or using the Package Manager GUI tool. Let's first do this from the command line.
rpm -qa | grep openssl
This will search through all installed packages for the string openssl. If it doesn't find anything, it returns nothing. Otherwise, it returns the full name and version of the package.
To do this using Package Manager, bring up this tool, and then on the Search tab, perform a search on openssl.
In this walkthrough, the openssl package was already installed. That's because the target CentOS machine was installed along with the
Server and
Server GUI package groups at the time of CentOS installation. These groups include the
openssl package. However, if you need to install it, just check the item as seen in Package Manager. This will enable the Apply button. Click the Apply button. This will install openssl. Alternatively, you can install openssl from the command line like so.
yum install openssl
This will install the latest version of openssl along with all of its dependencies. This completes installation of
openssl. In the next step, you will perform the installation of CentOS Directory Server itself.
Step 7: Install CentOS Directory Server
To start out, let's make sure that this hasn't been installed already. Enter the following command:
rpm -qa | grep centos-ds
This will likely return nothing, but it doesn't hurt to check.
Next, let's find out a bit more about this package before installing it. Enter the following command:
yum info centos-ds
This returns info on the package that is on the yum server.
You can install CentOS Directory Server in two ways: from the command line using
yum command or using
Package Manager. If you use Package Manager, open the tool and perform a search on centos-ds. Check the item described as
CentOS Directory, Administration, and Console Suite.
Alternatively, from the command line, enter the following command:
yum install centos-ds
Installation takes a minute or two. You'll be prompted once for input.
Note the dependencies that were also installed for you automatically. In particular, note that
cyrus-sasl and
ldapjdk dependencies were installed. These no longer need to be installed separately, as discussed elsewhere.
This completes CentOS Directory Server installation. It's not yet ready to run, as it still needs to be setup and configured. But you'll get to that after checking on whether certain support packages have been installed, which is the focus of the next step.
Step 8: Install Support Packages
There are a few support packages required by CentOS Directory Server, as discussed in the CentOS Directory Server Setup HowTo [9]. However, if you are working with a recent installation of CentOS, such as version 5.5, or greater, and you have installed the Server and Server GUI package groups, you may find that you do not need to specifically install these support packages separately. You may find that they're already installed. Let's check. Enter the following four commands in succession, waiting after each one to see its results:
rpm -qa | grep xorg-x11-xauth
rpm -qa | grep bitstream-vera-fonts
rpm -qa | grep dejavu-lgc-fonts
rpm -qa | grep urw-fonts
Executing each of these commands should return something like that shown below.
For this walkthrough, each of these support packages was previously automatically installed. For your own particular case, if you find one or more of these support packages missing, install them using standard
yum commands. This completes installation of the support packages. In the next step, you will setup and configure CentOS Directory Server instance and the Admin server.
Step 9: Setup and Configure CentOS Directory Server
Open a terminal, and enter the following command:
setup-ds-admin.pl
You shouldn't need to specifiy the path, as the /etc/sbin directory should already be a part of the machine's PATH. You'll be prompted along the way.
Would you like to continue with set up? [yes]:
Do you agree to the license terms? [no]: yes
At this point, dsktune runs and performs a system parameters check. It may identify a few areas for improving performance. For example, it may present warnings on memory and file descriptor parameters. Don't worry about these: you can adjust these later. Here's hjow to respond to the prompts during setup:
Would you like to continue? [no]:
yes
Choose a setup type [2]:
2
Computer name [CentOS1.corp.local.net]:
centos1.corp.local
System User [nobody]:
sysadmin
System Group [nobody]:
sysadmin
Do you want to register this software with an existing configuration directory server? [no]:
hit enter
Configuration directory server administrator ID [admin]:
hit enter
Password:
Password (confirm):
Administration Domain [corp.local]:
hit enter
Directory server network port [389]:
hit enter
Directory server identifier [centos1]:
hit enter
Suffix [dc=corp, dc=local]:
hit enter
Directory Manager DN [cn=Directory Manager]:
hit enter
Password:
Password (confirm):
Administration port [9830]:
hit enter
Are you ready to set up your servers? [yes]:
hit enter
This completes setup and configuration of CentOS Directory Server. In the next step, you'll make somem additional, minor configuration changes.
Step 10: Additional Configuration
Next, let's configure the openldap-client tools.
gedit /etc/openldap/ldap.conf
This opens the ldap configuration file. Add the following lines to this file:
BASE dc=corp, dc=local
HOST localhost
PORT 389
You should have something like the following
Next, configure the Directory Server daemon and the Directory Server Admin to startup at boot time. To do this, enter each of the following commands
chkconfig dirsrv on
chkconfig dirsrv-admin on
After configuring these, do a quick check to make sure these services are running by using the
service command:
This completes the additional configuration step. In the last step, you will launch the Directory Server Administration Console.
Step 11: Start the Directory Server Administration Console
Enter the following command in the terminal:
centos-idm-console
The console login prompt will appear.
Enter the User ID and password that you configured in Step 9, and then enter the URL using the port number that you also configured in Step 9. Click
OK. The CentOS Management Console appears.
Now that you have a working LDAP server installed and configured and ready, you'll need to start connecting other Linux machines to authenticate from this LDAP server, but that's outside the scope of this walkthrough.
Summary
Congratulations! You've installed and configured the CentOS LDAP Directory Server. Happy computing!
References
- OpenSSL - OpenSSL Project
- OpenLDAP - OpenLDAP Organization
- Install Directory Server in CentOS 5.5 - Roger Carhuatocto - Holism and Technology blog
- CentOS Directory Server On CentOS 5.2 - HowToForge - Linux Tutorials
- Red Hat Directory Server - Red Hat Documentation
- Installing 389 Directory Server - LinuxMail.info
- How to setup the CentOS Directory Server (389 Directory Server) neddix.com wiki
- NTP: The Network Time Protocol
- CentOS Directory Server, Basic Install - Centos HowTos
- Setting up CentOS Directory Server on CentOS 5.4 Linux - Raining Packets - December 30, 2009
- How can I change the TCP/IP tuning parameters? - Red Hat Magazine - 1/25/2007
- Linux: tcp keep alive setting - The R71 web dump - 25 November 2009
- VNC ( Virtual Network Computing ) - CentOS Documentation
- 389 Directory Server - The Fedora Project
- Chapter 11. Package Management Tool - Red Hat Documentation
- How do I find what dependencies a rpm file has? - nixCraft - January 14, 2006
- RPM Commands - CentOS Resources
- Yum Commands - CentOS Resources
- Chapter 11. Package Management Tool - Red Hat 5 Documentation
- Install and Configure OpenLDAP on CentOS 5 - HowToForge - January 28, 2011
Further Reading
Notes
