Ubuntu – ldapadd with automatic support for replace if entry already exists

backupldapopenldapUbuntu

I've been doing some testing with ldapadd and ldapmodify and what I noticed is:

–ldapadd will fail if the entry already exists:

=> hdb_tool_entry_put: txn_aborted! DB_KEYEXIST: Key/data pair already exists (-30995)
ldapadd: could not add entry dn="mail=test1@example.org,ou=People,dc=example,dc=org" (line=1): txn_aborted! DB_KEYEXIST: Key/data pair already exists (-30995)

–ldapmodify will fail if the entry doesn't:

modifying entry "mail=test2@example.org,ou=People,dc=example,dc=org"
ldap_modify: No such object (32)
matched DN: ou=People,dc=example,dc=org

Therefore when restoring a backup on an existing database with some existing and some missing entries you can't just use either of these tools, you need to create a routine that:
-either deletes all the users that already exists in the database and are present in the backup and then import using ldapadd.
-or converts the backup ldif file to be ldapmodify-compatible (add or modify depending on whether the user exists) and use ldapmodify.

Q: Isn't there a tool that would take care of that for you?

Additional info: running openldap 2.4.21 on ubuntu server 10.04

Best Answer

You can either give the -a flag to ldapmodify or put the line changetype: add into your LDIF data if you add an entry, and changetype: modify to modify the entry.

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