Older blog entries for lukeh (starting at number 28)

Does anyone know how you change your Advogato.org password?

Joe Little (jlittle) makes some interesting points about LDAP and NetInfo. One of the projects we talked about doing was writing an OpenLDAP backend to NetInfo's database layer, dsstore. I think this would be a useful project as I think NetInfo is easier to configure/manage on a large, distributed network than many LDAP implementations. We should remember (as Microsoft have with Active Directory) that LDAP is just an access protocol, and that there's nothing stopping you building something as elegant as NetInfo using LDAP as the principal access protocol. When most implementations are derived from the same codebase (the University of Michigan code), it becomes difficult for people to separate what the protocol provides from what has historically been provided by implementations of it.

So, given some cycles to burn, one should ask whether it's better to put some time into the OpenLDAP dsstore backend (which would make Apple happy) or instead put the work into OpenLDAP so that it has a similar complement of management and population tools as NetInfo.

pam_ldap-55 includes a patch from Doug Nazar which includes autoconf support amongst other things.

nss_ldap-110 includes a patch from Phillip Liu of LoudCloud to perform asynchronous binds to the LDAP server.

Had a cool dinner last night with a whole lot of LDAP-ish people from Apple, HP, TurboLinux, Netscape, and OpenLDAP. What fun to get everyone in the same place! WWDC wrapped up, learnt a bit about Quartz (Apple's PDF-based imaging model) yesterday.

Been playing with MacOS X. Gotta buy a Mac. Back to Melbourne tomorrow.

Check out the WWDC highlights page!

Yesterday, we found out a bit more about the IP stack in MacOS 9 and MacOS X, specifically IPsec and IPv6. It is interesting (perhaps just inevitable) that there are still bits of MacOS X with a distinctly "MacOS" vs "Rhapsody" flavour... for example, there appear to be directory service abstractions both at the application and OS layer. Then again, it's not like this hasn't happened before (Sun have XFN and NSS). I guess we'll find out in the directory service session later this afternoon.

Today we have the Apple campus beer bash and a reunion lunch of sorts :-)

Is there a copy of On The Road on every San Francisco bookshelf, or have I just a very small sample size?

Well, so far I haven't seen that much of WWDC, but that should change today. Yesterday I checked out the Java on MacOS X seminar, they showed a cool demo of a Swing applet automagically adopting the MacOS X look and feel. The other cool thing is that the place is "wirelessed" for AirPort, so there are people sitting around with the wireless-enabled PowerBooks and iBooks checking their mail and doubtless doing real work. Great idea, particularly given the contention for terminals in the Internet caf (when they opened the doors yesterday, it was like a bunch of schoolkids being let out early...).

Yesterday I met with a fellow Aussie from VA Linux to check out their campus and meet some people (Jeremy Allison, sadly, wasn't in). We then drove up to the city, where Adam had tickets to see The The (but not for me; and I wasn't going to pay the $90 people were scalping them for!). Instead, I hooked up with my former boss from Verve, Inc (formerly Xedoc). It is an indictment of the employment situation here when the first thing one of my friend's colleagues asked upon talking to him on his cellphone was "so, you had dinner with this guy... are we hiring him?".

Stayed in the city, caught the Caltrain up this morning. A few interesting, technical sessions on MacOS X today, plus the Darwin BOF, plus dinner with HP LDAP folk.

Got to WWDC today; the plane (from LA to San Francisco) was delayed of course, and by the time I arrived at SFO, caught the bus to San Jose airport, got a cab to the convention center, etc, I managed to just catch the last half hour of the Open Source presentation. It looked interesting though, and although I am very much jet lagged (having been up for 24 hours) it's exciting. I've never really been to one of these sorts of conferences before, unless you count MacWorld in 1998. Everyone is wearing WWDC badges and Apple T-shirts; it's fun to see some people I haven't seen since I worked at Apple and some other NeXT developers that I hadn't otherwise met... more later, off to see the Apple Masters session now (if I stay awake!).

Tomorrow brings more sessions and BALUG.

Posted nss_ldap-109. See the ChangeLog for details.

Time-capsule: DataServe. Enjoy, and remember, don't take it too seriously!