LDIF Files

While coding the synthetic data generator and I have also started analysing ldif active directory export files of various companies. Access to these files are granted by my industry sponsors as helpful resources for my PhD.

In analysing the ldif files, I am having some difficulty loading it into JXplorer. The error I get is javax.naming.CommunicationsException:connection closed[Root exception is java.io.IOException: connection closed] remaining name 'DC=ca, DC=com'. I think one of my co-workers suggested that it was because some of the objects were missing object classes. O_O. I guess there are also schema issues because each enterprise has their own AD schema and exporting the file simply extracts the data, not the formatting. But you'd think it would be able to work out a general idea of the tree.

I will keep working out how to load it into the directory on my VM if I can. Otherwise, I can manually (perl/python script) extract the user/group information that I need. There are perl scripts and modules that allow you to directly connect to an active directory or an x500 but they will not install properly into the university machines (I have limited privileges) and refuse to do so on my own Unix environment. I have successfully got it work in on my windows machine but I have not had a play with it. It might just end up easier to extract information from the files manually with a parser.