Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
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These pages are provided for historical reference only.
The LDAP software contained herein is out of date. We suggest
parties seeking open source, production quality LDAP software
explore OpenLDAP.
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The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is a protocol for
accessing online directory services. It runs directly over TCP, and can
be used to access a standalone LDAP directory service or to access a
directory service that is back-ended by X.500.
A widely used implementation of LDAP was written at the University of
Michigan, where development was being supported by the National
Science Foundation under Grant No. NCR-9416667. The final release of
the U-M LDAP package is available as a compressed Unix tar file:
This software, and its documentation
which describes how to use the UM implementation to set up a
directory service and also inlcudes an overview of LDAP-based
directory service, is provided merely for historical reference.
Current software is available from
OpenLDAP.
Some other related resources (not at UofM) include:
The University of Michigan LDAP implementation includes libraries for
writing LDAP clients, and it has been ported to many flavors of Unix
as well as to the Macintosh, MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, and VMS.
These libraries are included with the UM LDAP implementation
mentioned above:
There are several LDAP-related mailing lists that may be of interest:
- To join a general discussion and announcement list, send e-mail to:
ldap-request@umich.edu
The list is maintained by a listserver, so please inlcude the word "subscribe"
in either the subject or text of your message.
An online HTML archive of the ldap list was occasionally
updated; a more complete,
historical, archive is also available as one large text file.
- To join a very technical list where the LDAP protocol is discussed,
send e-mail to:
ietf-asid-request@umich.edu
- To ask questions about or report bugs inthe U-M LDAP implementation, send e-mail
to the general discussion and announcement list,
ldap@umich.edu,
described above.
There used to be a group of UM and Netscape people who would answer
questions sent to ldap-support@umich.edu and accept bug reports sent
to bug-ldap@umich.edu. The UM employees no longer receive funding
for LDAP research and the Netscape people have become busy with their
own products. As a result, email to ldap-support@umich.edu
bug-ldap@umich.edu only results in an automated message recommending
using the 'ldap@umich.edu' list for help.
Send comments about this page to:
dir@umich.edu