Step 8: Test Your Configuration With An LDAP Browser
Step 8: Test the configuration with an LDAP browser
At this point, your new VDS configuration should be up and running. You can now connect to VDS with an LDAP client, using the port number that you've specified in the listener. The VDS GUI has an integrated LDAP browser that you may consider using - it makes it very simple to browse and change data in your LDAP servers. A very convenient way to test configurations, is to have two LDAP browser windows open - one pointing to your LDAP back-end server(s), and the other one pointing to VDS.
To start the integrated LDAP browser, select "LDAP Browser" from the "Extras" menu or click the "Browser" button on the toolbar. Alternatively, the LDAP browser can be started from the contextual menu of your DataSource node, by right clicking on your defined DataSource.
When you start the integrated LDAP browser, a window will appear that will require you to enter the details for the server that you would like to connect to:
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Host name or IP Address of your LDAP server
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Port on which your LDAP server is listening
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Bind DN (if required) - credential for authentication
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Password (if required) - Password to be used for authenticating with the credential
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Root Suffix - DN on which the LDAP browser should start
Fig-9: Entering LDAP Server Parameters
Start by entering the details of your back-end LDAP server (not VDS). This is because you should make sure that you can connect to your LDAP back-end server first - if this is not possible, then VDS will most likely not be able to work with your current configuration and there will likely be errors in the logging area of the DSGUI window.
At the top of the window, there is a pull-down combo-box which offers shortcuts to servers that you frequently connect to. You can save your connection settings before you connect, so that the settings are added to the shortcut list, making it easier to access this connection in the future. There is more information on how to use the browser within the LDAP Browser Reference Manual.
Hint: If you will frequently access a server, it is worth saving the connection settings to be able to access these settings from the Connection Selector in the future.
If you click on the Test button, the LDAP browser will try to connect to the server, and either return a dialog indicating success or a dialog indicating an error, if the connection fails. If the test was successful, click OK and then click connect to start to browse the tree of your LDAP server.
Now, without closing the LDAP browser that you've opened, open another connection by clicking on File, and then on connection. When the pop-up window appears to provide the server details, fill in the details in order to connect to VDS. As VDS acts as an LDAP proxy in our current configuration, it effectively acts as if it were an LDAP server. As such, we should be able to use the LDAP browser to connect directly to the Input Listener that we have defined for this instance of VDS.
Fig-10: Entering Parameters to connect to Proxy
Fill in the hostname field by using either localhost or 127.0.0.1 (unless you've specifically configured a Listen address in the listener - in which case, you will have to enter the IP address that you have entered there). Fill in the same port that you have used in the listener. In our example, this was port 3890. If you need to authenticate to access your backend LDAP server, fill in the Bind DN and password that you would use on the backend server. Then fill in the Root Suffix, or alternatively click the "Suffixes" button and select a root suffix from the list that will pop up.
Fig-11: The LDAP Server Browser Window
Fig-12: The VDS Browser Window
You should now see an identical view of your LDAP tree as the one provided by your LDAP server. However this view of the tree is being provided by VDS. Since you have not configured any mapping, these views should effectively be exactly similar. Congratulations! You've built and run your first, simple configuration with VDS.
You can now go through the samples chapter in Dell One Identity Virtual Directory Server User's Reference Manual to learn how to configure additional functionality to the simple configuration that you have just created within DSGUI. These tutorials will assume that you have loaded the sample test data that is contained in the data subdirectory of the samples directory of your installation.