Linux Administration: A Beginner’s Guide, Seventh Edition, 7th Edition

CHAPTER 27

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) has been referred to as many things, including “the best thing since sliced bread.” But it is actually a set of open protocols used to access and modify centrally stored information over a network. LDAP is based on the X.500 standard (X.500 is an International Organization for Standardization [ISO] standard that defines an overall model for distributed directory services) but is a more lightweight version of the original standard. RFC 2251 explains the relationship like so: “LDAP is designed to provide access to directories supporting the X.500 models, while not incurring the resource requirements of the X.500 directory access protocol. Like ...