Backup & Restore LDAP database

28 Dec 2010 Matteo Mattei linux backup ldap

The today question is: did you ever happened to make an hot backup of an LDAP database? I will show you how to do it creating an LDIF file and then doing the respective restore (in the hope you will not really need it). After all it is quite simple…

BACKUP:

ldapsearch -x -b "dc=example,dc=com" -h 192.168.0.1 -D "cn=manager,dc=example,dc=com" -w secret_password "(objectclass=*)" > backup_file.ldif

RESTORE:

The new database must be empty!

ldapadd -D "cn=manager,dc=example,dc=com" -x -w secret_password -h 192.168.0.1 -f backup_file.ldif

Here there is the meaning of the parameters used:

• -x specifies that you want to use the “sample authentication” (rather than SASL)
• -b “dc=example,dc=com” indicates the BaseDN of the server, thus the position where we want to copy all nodes and entries.
• -h 192.168.0.1 is the address of the remote LDAP server.
• -D “cn=manager,dc=example,dc=com” specifies the LDAP user that will bind to the remote server.
• -w secret lets you to specify the password for the user you have previously chosed.
• “(objectclass=*)” specify all entries in the database.
• backup_file.ldif is the file, in LDIF format, where the backup will be executed.