Loading LDAP's Database

The easiest method of loading an LDAP directory is by means of an LDAP Data Interchange File (LDIF) formatted file. An example of the contents of an LDIF file is shown in initial.ldif

• All data values are specified as name/value pairs formatted as:

  name: value

• Each entry is identified by a distinguished name (dn) that appears as the first entry.
• Attributes follow, one per line.
• The entry is terminated by an empty line.

The LDIF format also specifies formatting of continuation lines (for long data types) and binary data types. Full details of the LDIF format may be found in RFC-2849.

An LDIF file can be loaded with the ldapadd utility. For example:

ldapadd -x -D "cn=Manager, dc=matchg, dc=com" -w secret -c -f initial.ldif