In a previous post I described howto restore a OpenLDAP server from backup . But how to backup Open LDAP?
The backups I make consist of two parts:
1. First backup the LDAP database itself using a program called ‘slapcat.’ Slapcat is used to generate an LDAP Directory Interchange Format (LDIF) output based upon the contents of a given LDAP database. This is a text version of your database which can be imported later. Think of it as a SQL-backup for relational databases. Anyway, here’s how to run slapcat on the OpenLDAP server:
slapcat -l backup.ldif
This will backup the whole database into the file called ‘backup.ldif’. You can then use this file to restore an OpenLDAP server later, using slapadd. Be sure to run this in a backup script from crontab and have a backup at least once per day.
2. Second thing I do, is backing up the config of the OpenLDAP server. This config is usually in /etc/ldap. Back it up using a tar, or using a technique like rsnapshot.
When you have this in place (and save the backups on a different place), you’ll be able to rebuild an OpenLDAP server without problems.
Remi Bergsma's blog 