LDAP Hosts

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Reason: Written in first person and like a blog post. (Discuss in Talk:LDAP Hosts)

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Reason: Still references rc.d. (Discuss in Talk:LDAP Hosts)

This document will allow you to put your /etc/hosts into your LDAP server. At first make sure you have an LDAP server up and running (take LDAP authentication as an introduction). Next you need to create a proper ldif file from /etc/hosts. Actually mine is like:

127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.1.1 gojira.marex.local gojira
192.168.1.50 gamera.marex.local gamera
192.168.1.51 iris.marex.local iris
192.168.1.52 zedan.marex.local zedan

Where 127.0.0.1 is localhost (of course), 192.168.1.1 is the LDAP server, followed by at least 3 workstation (gamera, iris & zedan). For a ldif file you need to create a ou for your hosts and each host (I will call the next file hosts.ldif):

dn: ou=Hosts,dc=marex,dc=local
objectClass: organizationalUnit
objectClass: top
ou: Hosts

dn: cn=gojira+ipHostNumber=192.168.1.1,ou=Hosts,dc=marex,dc=local
objectClass: ipHost
objectClass: device
objectClass: top
cn: gojira
ipHostNumber: 192.168.1.1

dn: cn=gamera+ipHostNumber=192.168.1.50,ou=Hosts,dc=marex,dc=local
objectClass: ipHost
objectClass: device
objectClass: top
cn: gamera
ipHostNumber: 192.168.1.50

dn: cn=iris+ipHostNumber=192.168.1.51,ou=Hosts,dc=marex,dc=local
objectClass: ipHost
objectClass: device
objectClass: top
cn: iris
ipHostNumber: 192.168.1.51

dn: cn=zedan+ipHostNumber=192.168.1.52,ou=Hosts,dc=marex,dc=local
objectClass: ipHost
objectClass: device
objectClass: top
cn: zedan
ipHostNumber: 192.168.1.52

Next put the file into your LDAP server with your credentials (output truncated):

$ ldapadd -x -W -D 'cn=ldapadmin,dc=marex,dc=local' -h 192.168.1.1 -p 389 -f hosts.ldif
...
adding new entry "cn=zedan+ipHostNumber=192.168.1.52,ou=Hosts,dc=marex,dc=local"

If everything filled up then edit your /etc/nss_ldap.conf and change the line beginning with nss_base_hosts to the following:

nss_base_hosts          ou=Hosts,dc=marex,dc=local?one

Now change the /etc/hosts in that way that only localhost, the LDAP server and the own name of the workstation exist. An example how it could look on the workstation gamera:

127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.1.1 gojira.marex.local gojira
192.168.1.50 gamera.marex.local gamera

On the LDAP server you can ignore every workstation. Finally you need to edit the hosts entry in your /etc/nsswitch.conf:

hosts:          files dns ldap

Now test your configuration:

$ getent hosts
127.0.0.1       localhost
192.168.1.1     gojira.marex.local gojira
192.168.1.50    gamera.marex.local gamera
192.168.1.1     gojira
192.168.1.50    gamera
192.168.1.51    iris
192.168.1.52    zedan

This article or section is out of date.

Reason: nscd was removed in glibc 2.38-4. (Discuss in Talk:LDAP Hosts)

The first 3 lines are from /etc/hosts, the last 4 lines are from your LDAP server. Finally to get ping working with LDAP you need to start nscd:

$ mkdir -p /var/db/nscd
$ mkdir -p /var/run/nscd
$ /etc/rc.d/nscd start
$ ping iris
PING iris (192.168.1.51) 56(84) bytes of data.
...