SLAPO-SSSVLV(5)

💖 SLAPO-SSSVLV 💖

okay bestie, so this is the slapo-sssvlv page from the File Formats Manual — aka the Server Side Sorting and Virtual List View overlay to slapd. yes the name is a mouthful, no we are not renaming it, it's iconic actually. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

slapo-sssvlv — the Server Side Sorting and Virtual List View overlay for slapd. literally what it says on the tin, she does sorting AND virtual list views AND she babysits your paged results. queen behavior 👑

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

/etc/openldap/slapd.conf

like… that's it. that's the file. she lives in your config. 💅

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so this overlay is doing a LOT and we should talk about it. she implements the LDAP Server Side Sorting control — that's RFC2891 for those of you taking notes 🦋 — and she ALSO does the Virtual List View control. and if that wasn't enough, she replaces the default implementation of the LDAP PagedResults control (RFC2696), because she needs PagedResults and Sorting to actually play nice together. girlies supporting girlies fr fr 🫶

she's flexible too — you can bolt her onto any backend, or run her globally for all backends. your config, your rules.

⚠️ real talk bestie, this part matters: because a complete result set must be generated in memory before sorting can be performed, processing sort requests can have a large impact on the server's memory use. 😭 that's not a vibe. so: any connection is limited to having only a limited number of sort requests active at a time. and if you want, you can configure even more limits, as described below ⬇️

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✨ CONFIGURATION ✨

these slapd.conf options apply to the SSSVLV overlay. they should appear after the overlay directive — order matters, ok? don't skip that step 🙈

• sssvlv-max <num> — sets the maximum number of concurrent sort requests allowed across all connections. the default? it's one half of the number of server threads. cute, right? ✨
• sssvlv-maxkeys <num> — sets the max number of keys allowed in a sort request. default is 5. five. count them. 🖐️
• sssvlv-maxperconn <num> — sets the max number of concurrent paged search requests per connection. default is 5. but heads up — the number of concurrent requests remains limited by sssvlv-max. so this one doesn't get to override the big one, she's a sub-limit. 💀

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✨ FILES ✨

• /etc/openldap/slapd.conf — the default slapd configuration file. 🎀
• /etc/openldap/slapd.d — the default slapd configuration directory. 🎀

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✨ SEE ALSO ✨

go read these too, bestie, i promise they're worth it 💜

• slapd.conf(5), slapd-config(5).
• "OpenLDAP Administrator's Guide" (http://www.OpenLDAP.org/doc/admin/)
• the IETF LDAP Virtual List View proposal by D. Boreham, J. Sermersheim, and A. Kashi, in the IETF document "draft-ietf-ldapext-ldapv3-vlv-09.txt". 📜

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✨ AUTHOR ✨

Howard Chu 🫡

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and that's the whole page, babe. this fine piece of documentation comes to you from OpenLDAP 2.7.2, dated 2026/10/21 — so if you're reading a different version, vibe check accordingly. slay, go sort some stuff, and remember: memory limits exist for a reason 🌸💖