Adding a New User to ApacheDS using Apache Directory Studio

Adding a New User to ApacheDS using Apache Directory Studio

In this post, we will see how to add a new user to ApacheDS using Apache Directory Studio. Steps for installing ApacheDS and Apache Directory Studio were published in previous blogs. This is the link for Apache DS and here is the link for Apache Directory Studio.

Ensuring the LDAP service is running

Often, I find upon booting my machine does not startup by default. I am still trying to resolve that. Till then, first thing remains to make sure that ApacheDS is running in the background. We need to test this by entering the following command.

> sudo /etc/init.d/apacheds-1.5.7-default status

We can see that the server process is running. Next step is to launch the Apache Directory Studio and connect to the apacheds configuration we had defined earlier.

Connecting to Apache DS through Apache Directory Studio

In a previous post, I had walked through the steps to define a new connection using Apache Directory Studio. For this post, we assume that the previous configuration is already saved and we can connect using the saved connection configuration as shown below.

Next we would like to create a new user, by clicking on the DIT node and navigating to the ou=users node as shown below, and right clicking to select the New option from the contextual menu as shown below (Make sure to click the “New Entry” option and not the “New Context Entry” option.)

Choose the option to Use the Existing Entry as template as shown below and click on “Next”.

In the next screen, user will be prompted to enter one structural object class for creating the new user. Select inetOrgPerson as the object class as shown below.

Once selected, click on “Add” to add the object class to the list of selected object classes. Doing so, also adds other object classes from the inetOrgPerson object hierarchy as shown in the screen below.

Enter the following details to create a valid acccount as shown below.

Parent: ou=users,ou=system

uid = jdoe

and click on Next

Enter the following details.

cn : John Doe

Also, enter the value sn as Doe. You can edit the empty value fields by double clicking the empty value field. Don't click “Finish” yet as we have to do one more thing.

Creating the password for the New User

As mentioned, we need to enter one custom field. Click on the New Attribute button as shown in the screenshot below.

Clicking on the “New Attribute” word shows the list of attributes. Select, the attribute type as “userPassword”.

Clicking on “Next” brings the prompt to enter the language and locale for the field value. Choose the attribute value as “en-US” as shown below (or a different one, if applicable in your case).

Clicking on “Finish” brings the prompt to enter the field value. Enter a password value that is applicable as shown below.

Clicking on “OK” would bring the following list of attributes.

There we go, we have the user account created.

That's it!

Download and Install Apache DS LDAP Server on Ubuntu 12.04

In this post, we will walk through step by step, the download and installation of LDAP Server on Ubuntu. I have selected ApacheDS for this task.

I will walk through installing Apache Directory Server 1.5.7 on Ubuntu 12.04 machine. ApacheDS assumes that you already have a JRE installed on your machine. I am assuming that this is the case for you as well.

To install Apache Directory Server, first open a browser and naviagte to http://directory.apache.org/

Here, we see two projects. First is ApacheDS and other is Apache Directory Studio. We are going to install ApacheDS. I accessed the link http://directory.apache.org/apacheds/1.5/downloads.html to install the latest stable version ApacheDS 1.5

I clicked on the link to Download Linux Debian DEB Installer. Turns out the link is pointing incorrectly to 2.0 builds. If this is the case for you as well, make sure you are accessing the 1.5 page. http://directory.apache.org/apacheds/1.5/download/download-linux-deb.html

Click on the link to access Linux x86_64 version. Access the downloaded version on the page in the download folder.

Now, right click on the file to install it using Ubuntu software center. This will launch the Ubuntu Software Center as shown below.

Click on the Install button shown on the right. It will prompt you to enter your password as shown below.

Once the installation is complete, close the Ubuntu Software Center.

Open a terminal window, and type the following

> ls /etc/init.d/apacheds*

You should see the daemon process having been created. Now, if you want to check if it is already running, enter the following command in the command line.

> sudo /etc/init.d/apacheds-1.5.7-default status

You should be able to see if it is running as follows

That's it folks. In the next post, we will see how to access Apache DS from the Studio software. Here we will see how to connect to the just installed Apache Directory Server as well as how to change the default password.