[H-SASIG] Online Payments / Membership DB people -- what role for LDAP? (was Re: [SysAdmin] #3: Trac authentication needs to be simple, easy, and automated)

[Brad Marshall]

Hi all,


On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 2:59 PM, Raymond Smith <raymond at storybridge.org> wrote:
> I think Trac has a module that allows for user registration (usual
> multi-step process similar to Mailing list subscription). I would be
> happy to just use that to get user accounts into LDAP for use with
> Trac.

My reading of http://trac-hacks.org/ticket/1147 says that it won't
populate the LDAP directory for us.  I might have missed something
else that can do it though.

> The other obvious option is to pull data from the membership database.
> Those plans seem to be in a state of flux. I guess we need other
> peoples opinions on this point.

Some sort of populated directory would be the best.

> 3. Where else to use LDAP?
>
> Really, I just want it for Trac :-)

What are you trying to gain though?  I'm not saying we shouldn't do
it, but if all we're doing is replacing a htpassword file with user
accounts in LDAP, I'm wondering if the complexity is worth it.  Its
when you have multiple things pointing to the LDAP tree you get the
value.

> But the other obvious places would
> be Wiki authentication and email alias management. But, again, would
> like to hear others opinions before anyone makes this happen.

Wiki shouldn't be too hard - I believe we're using Moin Moin, which
http://moinmo.in/MoinMoinQuestions/Authentication indicated should be
doable, if a little messy.  I'm sure we could do LDAP for email
addresses too.

We keep coming back to the issue with how to populate the LDAP
directory though, its key in getting any of this working.

Thanks,
Brad
-- 
Brad Marshall
brad at humbug.org.au
http://quark.humbug.org.au/