OpenLDAP
OpenLDAP is a directory service that can be used to hold user account details (amongst many other things) and thus used to provide common user accounts and passwords across many computers. The Chemistry department has an OpenLDAP service to provide common passwords on various departmental Unix machines. This service is now in the process of being replaced by Active Directory which is a different directory service providing LDAP services. The remaining clients of the old OpenLDAP service are the Theoretical sector managed Linux workstations and a few of the compute servers. We are working on reducing this list.
The OpenLDAP service was seeded using the user account data from chimaera on 15/08/07. chimaera itself is now an Active Directory client.
You can currently access the Theory sector Linux workstations using an OpenLDAP password (but not other managed Linux workstations, which only use Active Directory passwords). The zero, volkhan, and zippo compute clusters also use OpenLDAP but access is restricted to a particular group of people. Most of the other clusters use the OpenLDAP for mail routing but not for authentication. The OpenLDAP service provides a local email addressbook on the workstations in Alpine; it can also be used by other mail clients.
To change your OpenLDAP password or shell you use the standard Unix utilities on any OpenLDAP-enabled machine: passwd for your password, and chsh for your shell.
There are some non-standard scripts available to manipulate the OpenLDAP that may be useful. To change your email address in the OpenLDAP, use setuseremail. You can check what the address is set to with getuseremail. You can also check if your user account has an expiry date with getenddate. These scripts are available on the Linux workstations and chimaera.
Please note that any change you make applies to all OpenLDAP clients, so be very careful when changing your shell. It can take up to two minutes for a change to take effect over all machines.