Open design and architecture: 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).