LDAP System Administration

An FTP/HTTP Combination

The first set of services that we will explore is the combination of the ProFTPD server (http://www.proftpd.org/) and Apache (http://www.apache.org/). In this scenario, we would like to build a new web server and allow users to publish web content using an FTP client. All user and group accounts already exist in the LDAP directory, but just to make things interesting, assume that your theoretical web server platform cannot make use of either PAM or NSS to access any of this information.

The solution we would like to deploy is illustrated in Figure 8-2. Users should be able to put files into ~<username>/public_html on the web server using FTP. ProFTPD must authenticate user connections using information stored in the LDAP directory. These files should then be accessible via a web browser at http://www.plainjoe.org/ ~<username>. Because the server is not using an nss_ldap library, Apache must obtain the home directory path for users directly from the LDAP server.

Figure 8-2. Interaction between ProFTPD, Apache, and the LDAP directory on www.plainjoe.org

Two add-ins, both developed by John Morrissey (http://www.horde.net/~jwm), will help you implement your new web server. We will begin by looking at ProFTPD’s LDAP features.

ProFTPD

Morrissey’s LDAP authentication module (mod_ldap) is included with current releases of the ProFTPD server.^[2]

Our focus will be on ...