Re: newbie - Proper User of AD as Address Book

Tech Tip: Click here to run a free scan for Windows Errors and optimize PC performance

Well, I feel I am getting closer, thanks to your explanations.

However, I am still a bit lost when it comes to terminology. OU (Organization Unit) is really just a group? I don't see the term anywhere when I use the AD admin tool.

I know this is pretty much asking you to hand me everything on a silver platter, but is there anyway you could give me a step-by-step guide as to how to create the structure you are talking about? Just a group for me and a group for two contacts (or just one contact). I'm happy to manually enter the data just to see that AD will actually work for me.

I created a new 'group' called MyGroup (my thoughts are to make myself a member of this group). Next I created another group called MySubGroup (my thoughts were to add all my contacts to this group, somehow). Now, when I try to make MySubGroup a member of MyGroup, the latter cannot be seen in a list of objects. Perhaps I should not be using the Active Directory Users and Computers to create OUs? Is an OU a security group or a distribution group (or am I totally on the wrong track here)?

I think that if I could just get over this initial hump it would be fine. I know I am asking for something you might not have time to give, but if you do, I'd greatly appreciate it.

As a side note, it is strange that nobody offers hosted LDAP address books. Perhaps there is a market...from my reading of posts around the net, there is a market for it.

Thanks for everything,
John





Al Mulnick wrote: 
"Each 'user' of this LDAP server would have their own contact list (even
though there might be some overlap)."

That *could* be done, but not quite the way I think you're seeing it. At least not without a lot more work than you may want to take on for this type of return. One way that might work out for you is to create a separate OU for each user of the directory.

For example, User1 would have an OU of ou=user1,dc=domain,dc=com which would be what they would input in their search base for the address book configuration. Keep in mind that all objects are visible in AD by default (for this purpose anyhow). To make the contact lists more tied to a user, you'd put them in a separate OU and then configure the client to only look in that OU and below in the tree.

Like I said before, it's not that AD can't do what you speak of, it's just that it has a lot more overhead than needed. ADAM might be easier to work with in this case.

As for primers, there are several in the C# help files last I checked. Search for Active Directory and it should return plenty of primers and then some.

In the end, you just want to import the contacts to AD so they can then be viewed by users, using their address book via LDAP. Not terribly difficult when you get the hang of it and when you get up to speed. I think it will come quickly to you once you start down that path.

Does that help, or am I still not pointing you in the right direction?

"John M. Andre" <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:%236Gtou4OFHA.3144@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Thanks for the response but the page you referenced seems more exporting and modifying. Perhaps I am not paying attention but I don't see import as an option here (although I do see it with LDIFDE). I also looked at http://blogs.technet.com/exchange/archive/2004/08/04/208045.aspx (ADModify) but that app doesn't seem to accomplish what I want.

It is quite possible that the entire problem is due to my lack of understand as to how AD works / data should be structured. I have a lot of experience in database work and I guess the way I would think it would work is a one-to-many relationship between me and my contacts. Each 'user' of this LDAP server would have their own contact list (even though there might be some overlap).

Now, I am not using Exchange. I am using hMailServer so the Exchange functionality of ADModify seem disabled (which might be the functionality I need, but this is not clear to me).

I am happy to write my own app to do the work but the object names I see in System.DirectoryServices I do not understand (basic lack of understanding of AD, I would think). Perhaps there is an intro/white paper out there that can ramp me up on how to import contacts for a single user? I am assuming I don't have to make each of my contacts their own user.

Also, if this is so complicated, I don't really see a way to allow other users to important their own list of contacts (which I think they should be able to, as they can maintain their own address book). Seems like I might be buying myself a lot of work as the list of authorized users grows. Although even if I don't give anyone else access to this, at least I could get MY address book in here to accomplish my immediate goal.

All help warmly accepted.

John



Al Mulnick wrote:

You are killing a fly with a cannon so to speak, but a nice cannon nonetheless. You could have used just about any LDAP data store to be an address book. AD/AM is pretty easy to work with, as are several other LDAP products.

Your issue has to be solved with any LDAP store, so that's not so much an issue. Can you post a sample of what you're seeing as an error so we can understand what you're seeing?

In the meantime, you may want to look at http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/planning/activedirectory/bulksteps.asp

Since you're a c# developer, you may also want to look at the S.DS objects and methods to see if that's easier for you. You'll have to overcome the error, but it's hard to tell what that error is at the moment. Might be easier to just fix the command line and ldif syntax but couldn't hurt to learn.

Al

"John M. Andre" <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:OSRATJ0OFHA.3668@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Hi Guys,

I am sure everyone can answer this one but I am at a loss. I am very new to AD but am a pretty skilled C# software developer. Anyway, I boot into various OSs on my laptop (one for just development, one for main OS with all the goodies, etc.) and started having issues with email (need to read all email on all OSs). Easy solution, use IMAP instead of POP. Leave emails on the server and I can get at all of them under any OS I want.

Then I ran into another problem. How to keep all of my address books in sync? I would like to do this even across computers so shared folders is not really ideal. It seems to be that LDAP was created for this (as IMAP was created for my former problem). Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Since AD is an LDAP server, I decided to install AD on my public (Win2003) server. I found a nice step-by-step article which made it pretty painless. Now, I have no idea what to do next.

I have an address book (in Thunderbird) full of contacts. How can I get them into AD so I can access them in my mail client? I read a little and came across reference to LDIFDE so I exported my address book as LDIF and tried to import it to AD. The first record threw an error. It seemed that it was looking for information about me in this first line but the only information was about the contact in my address book.

So, can someone point me to some documentation on how do use AD as a 'location independent' address book? Am I killing a fly with a cannon here? Should I be using another technology instead of AD? There are other users of my public server so allowing others to import their contacts would be a great benefit, too.

Any advice is greatly appreciated,

John 



.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Populating Exchange 2003 Address List from External LDAP server
    ... external box that we only have LDAP connectivity to, so they don't actually exist on our box to have that attribute. ... do above is find a way we could effectively have a "dynamic address list" that would point to that LDAP box, and allow us to map attributes, would have been a much better solution to having to import them as contacts, but Exchange doesn't seem to natively have this functionality from what I've read. ... The dynamic LDAP query I was after wouldn't require anything of the sort, so you're off base with that one by saying I'm correct due to the fact there is no directory, when that is exactly what I was trying to avoid populating. ... effectively as SMTP contacts in a separate address list (or possibly multiple separate address lists, that remains to be seen, but that really doesn't change what needs to be done or how to do it). ...
    (microsoft.public.exchange.admin)
  • Re: Populating Exchange 2003 Address List from External LDAP server
    ... custom address list back to the external LDAP server through an LDAP ... but Exchange doesn't seem to natively have this functionality ... multiple separate address lists, that remains to be seen, but that ... expect the SMTP address to be the operative identifier. ...
    (microsoft.public.exchange.admin)
  • Re: Need mailing list mgr. comparison
    ... We're reincarnating the server ... > Majordomo with an alternative MLM. ... Mailman is compelling from the front end, but Python's LDAP support ... then remove from all lists. ...
    (comp.unix.admin)
  • Re: Need mailing list mgr. comparison
    ... We're reincarnating the server ... > Majordomo with an alternative MLM. ... Mailman is compelling from the front end, but Python's LDAP support ... then remove from all lists. ...
    (comp.unix.aix)
  • Re: Sendmail loses ground [NetBSD 4.0]
    ... odd repsondants, 100 odd used ldap, PostGreSQL, Oracle with the ... sendmail user and understand the mc file options, ... infact your not subscribed to full disclosure lists ... are you:) There was a post about 2 weeks ago about postfix. ...
    (comp.mail.sendmail)