openldap/doc/guide/admin/replication.sdf

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# COPYING RESTRICTIONS APPLY, see COPYRIGHT.
H1: Replication with slurpd

In certain configurations, a single slapd instance may be
insufficient to handle the number of clients requiring
directory service via LDAP. It may become necessary to
run more than one slapd instance.  Many sites,
for instance, there are multiple slapd servers, one
master and one or slaves.  DNS can be setup such that
a lookup of ldap.openldap.org returns the IP addresses
of these servers, distributing the load among them. This
master/slave arrangement provides a simple and effective
way to increase capacity, availability and reliability.

Slurpd provides the capability for a master slapd to
propagate changes to slave slapd instances,
implementing the master/slave replication scheme
described above. Slurpd runs on the same host as the
master slapd instance.



H2: Overview

Slurpd provides replication services "in band". That is, it
uses the LDAP protocol to update a slave database from
the master. Perhaps the easiest way to illustrate this is
with an example. In this example, we trace the propagation
of an LDAP modify operation from its initiation by the LDAP
client to its distribution to the slave slapd instance.


{{B: Sample replication scenario:}}

* Step 1: An LDAP client starts up and connects to a slave
slapd. 

* Step 2: The LDAP client submits an LDAP modify
. operation to the slave slapd.

* Step 3: The slave slapd returns a referral to the LDAP
. client, which causes the client to send the modify
. operation to the master slapd. 

* Step 4: The master slapd performs the modify operation,
. writes out the change to its replication log file and returns
. a success code to the client. 

* Step 5: The slurpd process notices that a new entry has
. been appended to the replication log file, reads the
. replication log entry, and sends the change to the slave
. slapd via LDAP. 

* Step 6: The slave slapd performs the modify operation and
. returns a success code to the slurpd process. 

Note: if the LDAP client happened to connect to the
master slapd to begin with, Step 3 is omitted, but the rest
of the scenario remains the same.



H2: Replication Logs

When slapd is configured to generate a replication logfile,
it writes out a file in a format which is a variant of the LDIF
format. The replication log gives the replication site(s), a
timestamp, the DN of the entry being modified, and a series
of lines which specify the changes to make. In the
example below, "Barbara Jensen" has replaced a line of
her multiLineDescription. The change is to be propagated
to the slapd instance running on slave.openldap.org
The lastModifiedBy and lastModified Time attributes are
also propagated to the slave slapd.

E: replica: slave.openldap.org:389
E: time: 809618633
E: dn: cn=Barbara Jensen, ou=People, o=OpenLDAP Project,c=US
E: changetype: modify
E: delete: multiLineDescription
E: multiLineDescription: I enjoy sailing in my spare time
E: -
E: add: multiLineDescription
E: multiLineDescription: A dreamer...
E: -
E: delete: lastModifiedBy
E: -
E: add: lastModifiedBy
E: lastModifiedBy: cn=Barbara Jensen, ou=People, o=OpenLDAP Project, c=US
E: -
E: delete: lastModifiedTime
E: -
E: add: lastModifiedTime
E: lastModifiedTime: 950825073308Z
E: -

The modifications to {{EX: lastModifiedBy}} and {{EX: lastModifiedTime}}
were initiated by the master {{I: slapd}}.



H2: Command-Line Options

Slurpd supports the following command-line options.

E: -d <level> | ?

This option sets the slurpd debug level to {{EX: <level>}}. When
level is a `?' character, the various debugging levels are
printed and slapd exits, regardless of any other options
you give it. Current debugging levels (a subset of slapd's
debugging levels) are


E:	    4 heavy trace debugging
E:	   64 configuration file processing
E:	65535 enable all debugging

Debugging levels are additive. That is, if you want heavy
trace debugging and want to watch the config file being
processed, you would set level to the sum of those two
levels (in this case, 68).

E: -f <filename>

This option specifies an alternate slapd configuration file.
Slurpd does not have its own configuration file. Instead, all
configuration information is read from the slapd
configuration file.

E: -r <filename>

This option specifies an alternate slapd replication log file.
Under normal circumstances, slurpd reads the name of
the slapd replication log file from the slapd configuration
file. However, you can override this with the -r flag, to
cause slurpd to process a different replication log file. See
section 10.5, Advanced slurpd Operation, for a discussion
of how you might use this option.

E: -o

Operate in "one-shot" mode. Under normal
circumstances, when slurpd finishes processing a
replication log, it remains active and periodically checks to
see if new entries have been added to the replication log.
In one-shot mode, by comparison, slurpd processes a
replication log and exits immediately. If the -o option is
given, the replication log file must be explicitly specified
with the -r option

E: -t <directory>

Specify an alternate directory for slurpd's temporary
copies of replication logs. The default location is /usr/tmp.

E: -k <filename>

When slurpd uses kerberos to authenticate to slave slapd
instances, it needs to have an appropriate srvtab file for
the remote slapd. This option allows you to specify an
alternate filename containing kerberos keys for the remote
slapd. The default filename is /etc/srvtab. You can also
specify the srvtab file to use in the slapd configuration
file's replica option. See the documentation on the srvtab
directive in section 5.2.2, General Backend Options. A
more complete discussion of using kerberos with slapd
and slurpd may be found in Appendix D.



H2: Configuring slurpd and a slave slapd instance

To bring up a replica slapd instance, you must configure
the master and slave slapd instances for replication, then
shut down the master slapd so you can copy the
database. Finally, you bring up the master slapd instance,
the slave slapd instance, and the slurpd instance. These
steps are detailed in the following sections. You can set
up as many slave slapd instances as you wish.


H3: Set up the master slapd

Follow the procedures in Section 4, Building and Installing
slapd. Be sure that the slapd instance is working properly
before proceeding. Be sure to do the following in the
master slapd configuration file.

^ Add a replica directive for each replica. The binddn=
. parameter should match the updatedn option in the
. corresponding slave slapd configuration file, and should
. name an entry with write permission to the slave database
. (e.g., an entry listed as rootdn, or allowed access via
. access directives in the slave slapd configuration file).

+ Add a replogfile directive, which tells slapd where to log
. changes. This file will be read by slurpd.



H3: Set up the slave slapd

Install the slapd software on the host which is to be the
slave slapd server. The configuration of the slave server
should be identical to that of the master, with the following
exceptions:

^ Do not include a replica directive. While it is possible to
. create "chains" of replicas, in most cases this is
. inappropriate.

+ Do not include a replogfile directive.

+ Do include an updatedn line. The DN given should
. match the DN given in the {{EX: binddn=}} parameter of the
. corresponding {{EX: replica=}} directive in the master slapd
. config file.

+ Make sure the DN given in the {{EX: updatedn}} directive has
. permission to write the database (e.g., it is listed as rootdn
. or is allowed access by one or more access directives).



H3: Shut down the master slapd

In order to ensure that the slave starts with an exact copy
of the master's data, you must shut down the master
slapd. Do this by sending the master slapd process an
interrupt signal with {{EX: kill -TERM <pid>}}, where {{EX: <pid>}} is the
process-id of the master slapd process.

If you like, you may restart the master slapd in read-only
mode while you are replicating the database. During this
time, the master slapd will return an "unwilling to perform"
error to clients that attempt to modify data.



H3: Copy the master slapd's database to the slave

Copy the master's database(s) to the slave. For an
LDBM-based database, you must copy all index files as
well as the "NEXTID" file. Index files will have a different
suffix depending on the underlying database package
used. The current possibilities are

* {{EX: dbb}} Berkeley DB B-tree backend
* {{EX: dbh}} Berkeley DB hash backend
* {{EX: gdbm}} GNU DBM backend
* {{EX: pag}} UNIX NBDM backend
* {{EX: dir}} UNIX NBDM backend

You should copy all files with such a suffix that are located
in the index directory specified in your slapd config file.



H3: Configure the master slapd for replication

To configure slapd to generate a replication logfile, you
add a "{{EX: replica}}" configuration option to the master slapd's
config file. For example, if we wish to propagate changes
to the slapd instance running on host
slave.openldap.org:

E: replica host=slave.openldap.org:389
E:	binddn="cn=Replicator, o=OpenLDAP Project, c=US"
E:	bindmethod=simple credentials=secret

In this example, changes will be sent to port 389 (the
standard LDAP port) on host truelies. The slurpd process
will bind to the slave slapd as 
"cn=Replicator, o=OpenLDAP Project, c=US"
using simple authentication with password "secret".
Note that the entry given by the binddn= directive must
exist in the slave slapd's database (or be the rootdn
specified in the slapd config file) in order for the bind
operation to succeed.



H3: Restart the master slapd and start the slave slapd

Restart the master slapd process. To check that it is
generating replication logs, perform a modification of any
entry in the database, and check that data has been
written to the log file.



H3: Start slurpd

Start the slurpd process. Slurpd should immediately send
the test modification you made to the slave slapd. Watch
the slave slapd's logfile to be sure that the modification
was sent.

{{EX: slurpd -f <masterslapdconfigfile>}}



H2: Advanced slurpd Operation

H3: Replication errors

When slurpd propagates a change to a slave slapd and
receives an error return code, it writes the reason for the
error and the replication record to a reject file. The reject
file is located in the same directory with the per-replica
replication logfile, and has the same name, but with the
string ".rej" appended. For example, for a replica running
on host slave.openldap.org, port 389, the reject file, if it
exists, will be named

E: /usr/tmp/replog.slave.openldap.org:389.

A sample rejection log entry follows:

E: ERROR: No such attribute
E: replica: slave.openldap.org:389
E: time: 809618633
E: dn: cn=Barbara Jensen, ou=People, o=OpenLDAP Project, c=US
E: changetype: modify
E: delete: multiLineDescription
E: multiLineDescription: I enjoy sailing in my spare time
E: -
E: add: multiLineDescription
E: multiLineDescription: A dreamer...
E: -
E: delete: lastModifiedBy
E: -
E: add: lastModifiedBy
E: lastModifiedBy: cn=Barbara Jensen, ou=People, o=OpenLDAP Project, c=US
E: -
E: delete: lastModifiedTime
E: -
E: add: lastModifiedTime
E: lastModifiedTime: 950825073308Z
E: -

Note that this is precisely the same format as the original
replication log entry, but with an ERROR line prepended to
the entry.



H3: {{I:Slurpd}}'s one-shot mode and reject files

It is possible to use slurpd to process a rejection log with
its "one-shot mode." In normal operation, slurpd watches
for more replication records to be appended to the
replication log file. In one-shot mode, by contrast, slurpd
processes a single log file and exits. Slurpd ignores
ERROR lines at the beginning of replication log entries, so
it's not necessary to edit them out before feeding it the
rejection log.

To use one-shot mode, specify the name of the rejection
log on the command line as the argument to the -r flag,
and specify one-shot mode with the -o flag. For example,
to process the rejection log file
/usr/tmp/replog.slave.openldap.org:389 and exit, use the
command

E: slurpd -r /usr/tmp/replog.slave.openldap.org:389 -o


H2: Replication from a slapd directory server to an X.500 DSA

In mixed environments where both X.500 DSAs and slapd
are used, it may be desirable to replicate changes from a
slapd directory server to an X.500 DSA. This section
discusses issues involved with this method of replication,
and describes the currently-available facilities.

To propagate changes from a slapd directory server to an
X.500 DSA, slurpd runs on the master slapd host, and
sends changes to an ldapd which acts as a gateway to
the X.500 DSA:

!import "replication.gif"; align="center"; title="Replication from slapd to an X.500 DSA"
FT: Figure 6: Replication from slapd to an X.500 DSA

Note that the X.500 DSA must be a read-only copy. Since
the replication is one-way, updates from DAP clients
connecting to the X.500 DSA simply cannot be handled.

A problem arises where attribute names differ between the
slapd directory server and the X.500 DSA. At present,
slapd and slurpd do not support selective replication of
attributes, nor do they support translation of attribute
names and values. For example, slurpd will attempt to
update the "modifiersName" and "modifyTimeStamp"
attributes on the slave it connects to. However, the X.500
DSA may expect these attributes to be named
"lastModifiedBy" and "lastModifiedTime".

A solution to this attribute naming problem is to have the
ldapd read oidtables that map "modifiersName" to the
objectID (OID) for the "lastModifiedBy" attribute and
"modifyTimeStamp" to the OID for the "lastModifiedTime"
attribute. Since attribute names are carried as OIDs over
DAP, this should perform the appropriate translation of
attribute names.