SLAPD(8C)

📦
version 2.7.2 · 26 versions
, in arch rolling

💖 SLAPD 💖 — and yes bestie, that's the slapd manual page, section 8C, we're doing the whole thing

okay so gather round, because we are reading the slapd page together and honestly? it's a lot. it's giving "the main character of your entire LDAP setup". we're doing this in parts, so this is part one — the vibes, the synopsis, and the whole intro. no skipping. no skimming. i'll know. 👀

✨ NAME ✨

slapd — Stand-alone LDAP Daemon

periodt. that's the name. that's what it is. 🎀

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

/usr/lib/slapd [-V[V[V]] [-4|-6] [-T {acl|a[dd]|auth|c[at]|
d[n]|i[ndex]|m[odify]|p[asswd]|s[chema]|t[est]}] [-d debug-level]
[-f slapd-config-file] [-F slapd-config-directory] [-h URLs]
[-n service-name] [-s syslog-level] [-l syslog-local-user]
[-o option[=value]] [-r directory] [-u user] [-g group] [-c cookie]

look at all those brackets, it's giving ✨options✨. every single one of them is optional-ish. we'll get into each of them, don't you worry your pretty little head. 💅

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

okay so. slapd is the stand-alone LDAP daemon. capital L, capital D, capital A, capital P. it is literally the whole point of this program: it sits there, it listens for LDAP connections, and it answers the LDAP operations that show up on those connections. iconic behaviour honestly. 👑

it listens on any number of ports — and the default is 389 (the only number you need to remember, fr fr). like, multiple ports, multiple vibes, all of them LDAP.

typically you invoke slapd at boot time, usually out of /etc/rc.local. so it's the thing that wakes up with your machine and just... stays there. loyal. dependable. main character energy. 🌅

🌈 what happens when it starts

upon startup, slapd normally forks and disassociates itself from the invoking tty. that's a fancy way of saying it peaces out from your terminal and goes and lives its own life in the background. you don't get to watch it. it has things to do. 🦋

if it's configured in the config file — or the config directory, both count — then the slapd process will:

  • print its process ID (see getpid(2)) to a .pid file 📝
  • print the command line options it was invoked with to an .args file (see slapd.conf(5)) 📝

so it leaves receipts. it's organised like that.

🚨 okay important one, no cap: if the -d flag is given — even with a zero argument — slapd will not fork and will not disassociate from the invoking tty. it stays right there with you. zero chill, zero detachment. you asked for debug mode, you got a friend who never leaves. 😭

📖 and also

see the "OpenLDAP Administrator's Guide" for more details on slapd. that's the official word, i'm just the messenger. 🫶

and that's part one, bestie — we haven't even gotten to the options yet and there are so many of them. stay tuned. 🌟

✨ OPTIONS ✨

okay bestie, this is the main event, the whole reason you're here 💅 every single flag, no skips, no cap.

  • -V[V[V]] — prints version info and then keeps going with startup like nothing happened. Add more V's for more drama: -VV prints the version info and then dips (exits right after). -VVV gives you all that plus the tea on the static overlays and backends. ✨
  • -4 — only listen on IPv4 addresses, periodt.
  • -6 — only listen on IPv6 addresses. we love an exclusive queen 🎀
  • -T tool — run in Tool mode. The tool argument picks whether you're running as slapadd, slapcat, slapdn, slapindex, slapmodify, slappasswd, slapschema, or slaptest. Heads up tho — slapacl and slapauth need the entire acl and auth option value spelled out, because a is already reserved for slapadd 😭. This option should be the first option specified when you use it; any remaining options get interpreted by the corresponding slap tool program, according to the respective man pages. And fun fact: those tool programs are usually just symbolic links to slapd. This option exists for the situations where symbolic links are not provided or not usable. slay for accessibility honestly 🫶
  • -d debug-level — turns on debugging as defined by debug-level. And listen: if you specify this option, even with a zero argument, slapd will not fork or disassociate from the invoking terminal. Some general operation and status messages are printed for any value of debug-level. debug-level is taken as a bit string, with each bit corresponding to a different kind of debugging information — see <ldap_log.h> for details. You can also pass comma-separated arrays of friendly names to select the debugging output of the corresponding debugging information; all the names recognized by the loglevel directive described in slapd.conf(5) are supported. And if debug-level is ?, a list of installed debug-levels is printed, and slapd exits. cute little menu 🎀
⚠️ bestie, serious face for one sec: remember that if you turn on packet logging, packets containing bind passwords will be output, so if you redirect the log to a logfile, that file should be read-protected. protect the password tea, fr fr 🔒
  • -s syslog-level — tells slapd at what debug-level debugging statements should be logged to the syslog(8) facility. syslog-level can be set to any value or combination allowed by the -d switch. slapd logs all messages selected by syslog-level at the syslog(3) severity debug-level DEBUG, on the unit specified with -l.
  • -n service-name — specifies the service name for logging and other purposes. Defaults to the basename of argv[0], i.e.: "slapd".
  • -l syslog-local-user — selects the local user of the syslog(8) facility. Value can be LOCAL0 through LOCAL7, as well as USER and DAEMON. The default is LOCAL4. BUT — this option is only permitted on systems that support local users with the syslog(8) facility. Logging to syslog(8) occurs at the "DEBUG" severity debug-level.
  • -f slapd-config-file — specifies the slapd configuration file. The default is /etc/openldap/slapd.conf.
  • -F slapd-config-directory — specifies the slapd configuration directory. The default is /etc/openldap/slapd.d. Now here's the vibe check: if both -f and -F are specified, the config file will be read and converted to config directory format and written to the specified directory 👑. If neither option is specified, slapd will attempt to read the default config directory before trying to use the default config file. If a valid config directory exists then the default config file is ignored. And all of the slap tools that use the config options observe this same behavior — consistency icon behavior, we love to see it 🦋
  • -h URLlist — slapd will by default serve ldap:/// (that's LDAP over TCP on all interfaces on default LDAP port). Meaning: it will bind using INADDR_ANY and port 389.

The -h option lets you specify LDAP (and other scheme) URLs to serve. For example, if slapd is given -h "ldap://127.0.0.1:9009/ ldaps:/// ldapi:///", it will listen on 127.0.0.1:9009 for LDAP, 0.0.0.0:636 for LDAP over TLS, and LDAP over IPC (Unix domain sockets). Host 0.0.0.0 represents INADDR_ANY (any interface). A space separated list of URLs is expected. The URLs should be of the LDAP, PLDAP, LDAPS, PLDAPS, or LDAPI schemes, and generally without a DN or other optional parameters (excepting as discussed below). Support for the latter three schemes depends on selected configuration options. Hosts may be specified by name or IPv4 and IPv6 address formats. Ports, if specified, must be numeric. The default ldap:// port is 389 and the default ldaps:// port is 636, same for the proxy enabled variants.

The PLDAP and PLDAPS URL schemes provide support for the HAProxy proxy protocol version 2, which allows a load balancer or proxy server to provide the remote client IP address to slapd to be used for access control or logging. Ports configured for PLDAP or PLDAPS will only accept connections that include the necessary proxy protocol header. Connections to these ports should be restricted at the network level to only trusted load balancers or proxies to avoid spoofing of client IP addresses by third parties. 👀 don't let the wrong people in the group chat.

For LDAP over IPC, name is the name of the socket, and no port is required, nor allowed; note that directory separators must be URL-encoded, like any other characters that are special to URLs; so the socket

/usr/local/var/ldapi

must be specified as

ldapi://%2Fusr%2Flocal%2Fvar%2Fldapi

The default location for the IPC socket is /var/lib/openldap/run/ldapi

The listener permissions are indicated by "x-mod=-rwxrwxrwx", "x-mod=0777" or "x-mod=777", where any of the "rwx" can be "-" to suppress the related permission, while any of the "7" can be any legal octal digit, according to chmod(1). The listeners can take advantage of the "x-mod" extension to apply rough limitations to operations, e.g. allow read operations ("r", which applies to search and compare), write operations ("w", which applies to add, delete, modify and modrdn), and execute operations ("x", which means bind is required). "User" permissions apply to authenticated users, while "other" apply to anonymous users; "group" permissions are ignored. For example, "ldap:///????x-mod=-rw-------" means that read and write is only allowed for authenticated connections, and bind is required for all operations. This feature is experimental, and requires to be manually enabled at configure time. 🧪 experimental bestie, don't @ me.

  • -r directory — specifies a directory to become the root directory. slapd will change the current working directory to this directory and then chroot(2) to this directory. This is done after opening listeners but before reading any configuration file or initializing any backend. When used as a security mechanism, it should be used in conjunction with -u and -g options. squad goals 🔐
  • -u user — slapd will run with the specified user name or id, and that user's supplementary group access list as set with initgroups(3). The group ID is also changed to this user's gid, unless the -g option is used to override. Note when used with -r, slapd will use the user database in the change root environment.

Note that on some systems, running as a non-privileged user will prevent passwd back-ends from accessing the encrypted passwords. Note also that any shell back-ends will run as the specified non-privileged user.

  • -g group — slapd will run with the specified group name or id. Note when used with -r, slapd will use the group database in the change root environment.
  • -c cookie — this option provides a cookie for the syncrepl replication consumer. The cookie is a comma separated list of name=value pairs. Currently supported syncrepl cookie fields are rid, sid, and csn. rid identifies a replication thread within the consumer server and is used to find the syncrepl specification in slapd.conf(5) or slapd-config(5) having the matching replication identifier in its definition. The rid must be provided in order for any other specified values to be used. sid is the server id in a multi-provider configuration. csn is the commit sequence number received by a previous synchronization and represents the state of the consumer content which the syncrepl engine will synchronize to the current provider content. In case of multi-provider replication agreement, multiple csn values, semicolon separated, can appear. Use only the rid part to force a full reload. 🔄
  • -o option[=value] — this option provides a generic means to specify options without the need to reserve a separate letter for them.

It supports the following options:

  • slp={on|off|slp-attrs} — when SLP support is compiled into slapd, disable it (off), enable it by registering at SLP DAs without specific SLP attributes (on), or with specific SLP attributes slp-attrs that must be an SLP attribute list definition according to the SLP standard.

For example, "slp=(tree=production),(server-type=OpenLDAP),(server-version=2.4.15)" registers at SLP DAs with the three SLP attributes tree, server-type and server-version that have the values given above. This allows one to specifically query the SLP DAs for LDAP servers holding the production tree in case multiple trees are available. 🌳✨

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

To start slapd and have it fork and detach from the terminal and start serving the LDAP databases defined in the default config file, just type:

/usr/lib/slapd

To start slapd with an alternate configuration file, and turn on voluminous debugging which will be printed on standard error, type:

/usr/lib/slapd -f /var/tmp/slapd.conf -d 255

To test whether the configuration file is correct or not, type:

/usr/lib/slapd -Tt

three commands, three vibes, all iconic 💖

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

ldap(3), slapd.conf(5), slapd-config(5), slapd.access(5), slapacl(8), slapadd(8), slapauth(8), slapcat(8), slapdn(8), slapindex(8), slapmodify(8), slappasswd(8), slapschema(8), slaptest(8).

"OpenLDAP Administrator's Guide" (http://www.OpenLDAP.org/doc/admin/) — the required reading bestie, no skipping 📚

💀 BUGS 💀

See http://www.openldap.org/its/

(yeah, that's the whole section. go file an issue if something's giving chaos 😭)

✨ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ✨

okay so before we go, we GOTTA give credit where credit is due, bestie, because none of this popped out of thin air 💖

OpenLDAP Software is developed and maintained by The OpenLDAP Project over at <http://www.openldap.org/> — like, they're the ones doing the actual work, the maintenance, the whole thing. Absolute icons. 👑

And the lore?? The OpenLDAP Software is derived from the University of Michigan LDAP 3.3 Release. fr fr, that's the ancestry. That's the origin story. 🧬✨

so yeah, that's the whole page, bestie. you made it to the end, and that's main character energy if i've ever seen it 🫶

this was OpenLDAP 2.7.2, dated 2026/10/21 — the SLAPD(8C) page, now officially devoured by you. go slay some directories. 💅🌸🦋
📦 where this page comes from