Arthur de Jong

Open Source / Free Software developer

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News in 2007

  • 2007-12-27 release 0.5 of nss-ldapd
    This release brings a number of major structural internal changes. The code is now in a state that features may be re-added.
    This release is well-tested and should be stable, although it introduces a lot of changed code so there may be issues that are overlooked (see the README and TODO files for missing and unsupported features).
    changes since 0.4.1:
    • major structural changes in the LDAP lookup code using a newly implemented module that does memory management, session handling, paging and all other painful things with a simple interface
    • rewritten LDAP query and result handling code, now generating warnings about incorrect entries in the LDAP directory
    • IPv6 addresses in host lookups are now supported
    • added Kerberos ccname support (with the krb5_ccname option) thanks to Andreas Schneider and Ralf Haferkamp from SuSE and remove --with-gssapi-dir, --enable-configurable-krb5-ccname-gssapi and --enable-configurable-krb5-ccname-env configure options and having automatic detection instead
    • added support for DNS SRV record lookups by specifying DNS as uri thanks to Ralf Haferkamp and Michael Calmer from SuSE
    • added support for DOMAIN as base DN which uses the host's domain to construct a DN
    • removed nss_connect_policy, bind_policy and sizelimit options
    • cleaned up and documented reconnect logic with reconnect_tries, reconnect_sleeptime and reconnect_maxsleeptime options
    • configuration values with spaces in them (e.g. distinguished names) are now handled properly
    • fix a small memory leak in the I/O module
    • miscellaneous code improvements (better source code comments, more consistent logging, portability improvements, more tests, etc)
    • improvements to documentation
    Get this release from the downloads section.
  • 2007-11-20 about race condition in nss_ldap
    A race condition (CVE-2007-5794) in nss_ldap was found that, under certain circumstances, could cause NSS functions to return incorrect data which may in turn have security implications.
    nss-ldapd is not affected by this problem.
    Although nss-ldapd shares quite a bit of code with nss_ldap no persistent connections exist within the NSS module because the connection to the LDAP server is only persistent in the local nslcd daemon.
  • 2007-10-26 release 0.4.1 of nss-ldapd
    This release fixes some bugs in the 0.4 release. This release does not introduce major code changes.
    changes since 0.4:
    • added French debconf translation by Cyril Brulebois
    • added Japanese debconf translation by Kenshi Muto
    • fix a problem with network name lookups where the lookup would result in the wrong call to nslcd
    • fix wrong default filter for rpc lookups
    • fix a number of memory leaks (thanks valgrind) (all memory leaks during normal operation should be fixed now)
    Get this release from the downloads section.
  • 2007-10-05 release 0.4 of nss-ldapd
    This is another release of nss-ldapd with some major changes. This release has undergone code cleanup mostly in the LDAP query and connection parts.
    Development on nss-ldapd is still ongoing and may see several major changes before a first stable release. This release removes around 25% of the code (relative to 0.3) and some quick tests show that NSS lookups are much faster than with nss_ldap (a simple shell script that spawned getent queries was 4 times as fast). It should be noted that small lookups are especially faster, probably due to removed complexity in locking.
    This release also removes some features that were present in the original nss_ldap module. The focus is still on improving the codebase. If important features are missing, these can be added later on upon request.
    changes since 0.3:
    • remove nss_schema configfile option
    • temporary remove support for uniqueMember group membership attributes (will be re-added in a later release)
    • removed support for nested groups, if this is really needed (please ask or file a bug if you want it) it can be re-added later on
    • added missing docbook sources for manual pages to tarball
    • major cleanups and simplifications in the core LDAP query code (we don't need to worry about SIGPIPE because nslcd does that globally, locking because a connection is only used by one thread) and more simplifications the the LDAP connection and query state
    • get base, scope, filter and map configfile directives properly working
    • simplifications in LDAP reconnect logic (some work remains to be done in this area)
    • issue warnings or errors for untested or unsupported configuration options
    • properly handle multiple URIs in Debian configuration
    • documentation improvements
    Get this release from the downloads section.
    Any bug reports or success stories are more than welcome.
  • 2007-08-26 release 0.3 of nss-ldapd
    This is another release of nss-ldapd with some major changes. This release has undergone code cleanup mostly in the configuration and attribute mapping parts. These changes should pave the way for simplifications to the LDAP query core.
    This release should be usable for most common environments, although handling of unavailability of the LDAP server is still not very elegant. Development on nss-ldapd is still ongoing and may see several major changes before a first stable release.
    This release also removes some features that were present in the original nss_ldap module. The focus is still on improving the codebase. If important features are missing, these can be added later on upon request.
    changes since 0.2.1:
    • a bug in the communication buffer handling code was fixed
    • a bug in the dictionary code was fixed (code not yet in use)
    • a fix for the init script that used a wrong pidfile
    • configuration file handling code was rewritten to better maintainable
    • some configuration file options have changed which means that compatibility with the nss_ldap configuration file is lost
    • configuration syntax is now documented in the nss-ldapd.conf(5) manual page
    • support for dnsconfig was removed
    • the configuration file no longer supports using multiple search bases
    • removed nss_initgroups and nss_initgroups_ignoreusers options
    • removed --enable-paged-results configure option and use pagesize configuration file option to specify usage of paging at runtime
    • added Portuguese debconf translation by Américo Monteiro
    • Debian package configuration improvements and simplifications
    • use docbook2x-man for generating manual pages
    • miscellaneous documentation improvements including improved manual pages
    • general code reorganisation and clean-ups to achieve another 9% code reduction relative to 0.2.1 release (more than 40% relative to nss_ldap)
    • SASL, Kerberos and SSL/TLS support remain untested
    Get this release from the downloads section.
    Any bug reports or success stories are more than welcome.
  • 2007-06-17 release 0.2.1 of nss-ldapd
    This is a quick update to the earlier 0.2 release that of nss-ldapd. This release fixes a number of build and runtime problems and does not include any new features or new code.
    changes since 0.2:
    • fix permissions of server socket (this fixes a problem where non-root users were unable to do lookups)
    • fix configure script to properly check for pthread support
    • small code improvements
    • general build system cleanups
    Get this release from the downloads section.
  • 2007-06-11 release 0.2 of nss-ldapd
    This is the second public release of nss-ldapd. It is developed as a drop-in replacement for nss_ldap. This release has undergone several improvements and should be usable (it is in use in several smaller production environments without any problems).
    Development on nss-ldapd is however still ongoing and may see several major changes before a first stable release.
    changes since 0.1:
    • fixes in the netgroup lookup code
    • more simplifications and improvements in the code almost 5% code reduction (compared to release 0.1) and 37% reduction in gcc warnings (from 443 in 251 to 389 in 0.1 and 244 in 0.2)
    • a lot of code improvements thanks to flawfinder, more gcc warnings, splint and rats
    • license change from GNU Library General Public License to GNU Lesser General Public License (with the permission of Luke Howard)
    • fix logging code to be cleaner and always use our own logging module
    • a start has been made to make the code more testable and initial work to set up a testing framework has been done
    • implemented a time out mechanism in the communication between the NSS part and the nslcd server part
    Get this release from the downloads section.
    Work is under way in a separate development branch to completely rewrite the LDAP interface code.