Project:Infrastructure/LDAP Guide

This is a guide to using the Gentoo Infrastructure LDAP system for developers, recruiters and administrators.

Introduction
LDAP stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, a lightweight client-server protocol for accessing directory services. LDAP directory service is based on a client-server model. One or more servers contain the data making up the LDAP directory tree. An LDAP client connects to an LDAP server and requests information. The server responds with the data or points the client to another source (typically another LDAP server).

Just like a database, an entry in LDAP consists of fields of data or 'Attributes'. This collection of attributes is called a 'Schema'. This guide will explain which attributes are available, who can change them and give role based examples for modifying the Gentoo LDAP Schema.

When a developer accesses a resource, like dev.gentoo.org (woodpecker.gentoo.org), the resource acts as an LDAP client and queries the LDAP server (ldap1, ldap2, ldap3, ldap4) to see if that user is in the database and authorized for access.

LDAP access levels
LDAP is used by Gentoo to secure the infrastructure. Gentoo resources are spread across the globe and LDAP gives us a central location to manage them. There are four levels of access: anonymous, user, recruiter and infra that are used to control what can be changed in the LDAP database. These are controlled via special values in the gentooAccess attribute.

You must connect or bind to the LDAP database either anonymously, or as a known user. Binding anonymously will always grant only the anonymous level, while binding as a known user will grant you the level based on your user and potentially where you are connecting from.

The anonymous level is used for simple read only informational queries. All developers can bind to LDAP as anonymous. If you don't specify a mode when you bind, anonymous is assumed.

The user level is used to add or change information in your own LDAP record. Things like your latitude and longitude, ssh public key and so on. All users can access the user level, by binding as themselves with the mode specified, and providing their password.

The recruiter level enables recruiters to add new users, and perform some administrative changes to users.

The infra level enables the infrastructure team full power over LDAP, and is additionally protected by only being available from ldap1.gentoo.org.

LDAP servers
Currently we have four LDAP servers available. The master server and three slave servers. The master LDAP server is reachable at ldap1.gentoo.org. The slave servers are ldap2.gentoo.org, ldap3.gentoo.org, ldap4.gentoo.org and they connect every 60 seconds to the master to replicate changes from the master.

Every update operation must be done on ldap1.gentoo.org, if an update (which means writing some entry) is performed on the slave a referral to the master is issued. This is transparently handled and all attempts to update against the slave will be redirected to the master. Connections are validated via TLS + password. The password is your dev one and is the same for all LDAP-aware boxes.

We use a custom script, that uses Net::LDAP, for accessing and modifying the database, it allows only a predefined set of actions but it should cover 95% of the cases. In the following chapters we explain how to use it.

Git commit access
Infra uses to control access to the Gentoo git repositories. At this moment, there is no automation of key updates and one of the Infra members needs to manually sync the keys from LDAP to gitolite and commit the change.

Available attributes
The following attributes are included in the Gentoo Schema. Note the 'Access Level' needed to write each attribute. Anonymous reading is allowed unless otherwise noted. Required fields are emphasized.

Standard attributes
We use a number of standard LDAP schemas for user records where possible: inetOrgPerson, organizationalPerson, person, posixAccount, shadowAccount. Some of the attributes in these schemas are listed below.

LDAP management with perl_ldap
These are the main concepts of the perl_ldap script used for user administration. Invoking perl_ldap without arguments or with  shows a help output. Your own LDAP password is required when binding.

The script is the infra supported method for managing entries, nothing prevents you from using any LDAP browser you like for modifying your attributes. If you like to use something else, ask infra for connection details but keep in mind that we won't support and/or troubleshoot other browser's issues.

The following are commonly used options:


 * Used to bind to the LDAP server. If you don't specify, the script will default to anonymous and be read-only.
 * Used to bind to the LDAP server. If you don't specify, the script will default to anonymous and be read-only.


 * Shows the entire LDAP record for the user.
 * Shows the entire LDAP record for the user.


 * Searches for a specific attribute across all users.
 * Searches for a specific attribute across all users.


 * Overwrites the value of an attribute for the specified user.
 * Overwrites the value of an attribute for the specified user.


 * Creates a new attribute for the specified user.
 * Creates a new attribute for the specified user.


 * Erases an attribute.
 * Erases an attribute.

Users
Gentoo Developers (recruiters and infra please refer to the following sections) can update their LDAP record directly. Here are examples of the most commonly changed attributes. The most common error is using a actual username in place of the  argument, which takes user as the parameter.

Show attributes for a user entry (substitute $USER for an actual user name):

Binding as a user will show additional information:

Change user's roles:

Change your GPG key (substitute <**fp> with your GPG key fingerprint. It should be a 40 character sha1 sum. Exclude the leading  if it exists):

Add a new public SSH key (substitute 'pubkey' with the path to your public SSH key. ex: ) You should have one sshPublicKey attribute per key! No newlines! Only replace $USER, not "user" after the  flag:

Erase an old public SSH key:

Change your LDAP password: To change your password, simply use the normal passwd command on any LDAP-enabled server. Do not use perl_ldap to change your password, as it does not perform any password hashing.

Change your login shell: To change your login shell, simply use the normal chsh command on any LDAP-enabled server. If you want to use a shell other than bash, ask infra about it's availability on other machines

Change your SPF rules:

Add latitude (lets you appear on the developers map):

Add longitude (lets you appear on the developers map):

Add gentooIM with your Freenode handle:

Recruiters
Recruiters can change their own attributes or those of another user. You must bind as recruiters to change any attributes including your own. The following examples show how to change attributes for other users. To change your own attributes use the examples from the "users" section above but bind as a recruiter.

When dealing with users that belong to a sub-OU the  option must be used, this will be clarified in the examples. The command  must be used if the target user belongs to a sub-OU.

The following examples will show you how to change attributes for users, recruiters and infra. All write operations performed by infra against another user must be performed on dev.gentoo.org (woodpecker.gentoo.org).

Some attributes, like sshPublickey and mail, allow multi-values. To append an additional value to the exiting ones use. You may not use  with multi-valued attributes.

Modify (overwrite) an existing single-instance attribute for a user:

Modify (overwrite) an existing multiple-instance attribute for a user:

Delete an attribute for a user:

Add a new user (infra, recruiters):

Delete a user (infra):

Create or modify multi-value attributes. Create a new attribute while preserving the existing ones. Use the command multiple times to add additional attributes

Reset a user password: Only available to senior recruiters and infrastructure admins in the useradmin group on woodpecker, as well as either the recruiters or infra-ldapadmin groups in LDAP. You will be prompted for YOUR password. The new user password will NOT be shown to you, it will only be placed in :

Infra
Infra can change their own attributes or those of another user. You must bind as user to change any attributes, including your own. To change your own attributes use the examples from the "users" section above from any LDAP-aware machine. To change another users record, you must be using perl_ldap from ldap1.gentoo.org (thrasher.gentoo.org).

The attribute  controls which boxes a user can login to. Only infra and a few selected recruiters are allowed to create and modify this multi-value attribute. The FQDN must be used (ex. roadrunner.gentoo.org). Some special values also exist: infra.group, infra-ldapadmin.group, infra-cvsadmin.group, infra-system.group, recruiters.group.

External resources

 * LDAP HOWTO