Symas OpenLDAP Knowledge Base

OpenLDAP Project Support

The OpenLDAP Project no longer fixes defects in any of the OpenLDAP 2.4 releases. Users are strongly advised to move the current release of either:

  • OpenLDAP 2.5, the “Long Term”Support” (LTS) Release to be supported until, at least, the end of 2025(?). 2.5 is not being enhanced with features from OpenLDAP 2.6 or the planned OpenLDAP 2.7 release. Defect fixes in 2.5 are limited to the features available in the original release of 2.5.
  • OpenLDAP 2.6, the current “Feature” Release. 2.6 will be superseded by OpenLDAP 2.7 when that new “Feature Release” becomes available. After release of 2.7, 2.6 will NOT be updated with code fixes and users of 2.6 upgrade to 2.7.

For the project’s policy statement and the announcements of OpenLDAP Releases please click here.

Backward Compatibility

OpenLDAP 2.4 instances can generally be upgraded to 2.5 or 2.6 without a database reload. Certain functional enhancements have made on-disk NOT backwards compatible between 2.4 and the more recent releases. In those instances, a current backup taken by slapcat will be needed to load the first 2.5 or 2.6 server instance. After that, backups taken with mdb_copy can be used to propagate the database to additional servers.

There are several minor configuration options/settings that change release to release. Please refer to the documentation on the Symas Package Repository Web site.