How to take a LDAP trace with OpenLDAP

This document (7006929) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 3
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Service Pack 3
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 Service Pack 4
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9

Situation

When troubleshooting issues with OpenLDAP, it's sometimes required to log the individual operations (bind, search, modify, add, delete) and associated return codes.

Resolution

OpenLDAP sends logging information to syslogd. Therefore, all of these messages will be in the /var/log/messages file.

To turn on logging, follow these steps.

Add the following line at the top of the /etc/openldap/slapd.conf file.

loglevel 4
Restart OpenLDAP

$ rcldap restart

The result code for all LDAP operations has this format.

send_ldap_result: err=0 matched="" text=""

The five main operations are logged in these formats.

Bind

Dec 5 14:42:21 sles10sp3 slapd[29652]: ==> bdb_bind: dn: cn=admin,o=foo

Modify

Sep 27 12:13:18 sles10sp3 slapd[3784]: do_modify: dn (uid=math,o=foo)
Sep 27 12:13:18 sles10sp3 slapd[3784]: modifications:
Sep 27 12:13:18 sles10sp3 slapd[3784]: replace: sn
Sep 27 12:13:18 sles10sp3 slapd[3784]:          one value, length 5

Add

Sep 27 12:14:20 sles10sp3 slapd[3784]: do_add: dn (uid=math,o=foo)

Delete

Sep 27 12:35:01 sles10sp3 slapd[4628]: ==> bdb_delete: uid=math,o=foo

Search

Dec 5 14:38:55 sles10sp3 slapd[29566]: SRCH "o=foo" 2 3
Dec 5 14:38:55 sles10sp3 slapd[29566]:     0 0 0
Dec 5 14:38:55 sles10sp3 slapd[29566]:     filter: (cn=admin)
Dec 5 14:38:55 sles10sp3 slapd[29566]:     attrs:
Dec 5 14:38:55 sles10sp3 slapd[29566]: sn
Dec 5 14:38:55 sles10sp3 slapd[29566]: cn

The first line consists of four arguments.

Field 2 - Search base

Field 3 - Scope

0 - base
1 - one
2 - subtree

Field 4 - Alias dereferencing

The second line consists of three arguments.

Field 1 - Size limit

Field 2 - Time limit

Field 3 - Attributes only

The log levels can be set with a number, hex value, or log name

example with log name:

'loglevel conns sync acl'

or with number

'loglevel 19392'

To use numbers the values are added together for example loglevel 5 is "trace function calls" and "heavy trace debugging" or loglevel 7 is "trace function calls", "packet-handling debug info", and "heavy trace debugging".

The possible values for number, hex value and log name are:

Number	Hex	Log name	Logging description
-1	0xFFFF	any	enable all logging
0	0x0000	-	logging inhibited - no logging occurs including critical errors. Not recommended.
1	0x1	trace	trace function calls
2	0x2	packets	debug packet handling
4	0x4	args	heavy trace debugging
8	0x8	conns	connection management
16	0x10	BER	print out packets sent and received
32	0x20	filter	search filter processing
64	0x40	config	configuration file processing
128	0x80	ACL	access control list processing
256	0x100	stats	stats log connections/operations/results (default)
512	0x200	stats2	stats log entries sent
1024	0x400	shell	print communication with shell backends
2048	0x800	parse	entry parsing debugging
4096	0x1000	cache	caching (unused)
8192	0x2000	index	indexing (unused)
16384	0x4000	sync	print syncrepl (replica) logging
32768	0x8000	none	A misnomer - it will log messages that are not categorized - specifically including critical messages

Additional Information

The most common log level settings are loglevel 4 and loglevel 5

logfile /path/to/ldap/log/file

To log the LDAP traffic to another file add this to syslog.conf:

logfile /var/log/openldap.log

The log file must exist for Openldap to log to this file so create an empty file

touch /var/log/ldap.log

Disclaimer

This Support Knowledgebase provides a valuable tool for SUSE customers and parties interested in our products and solutions to acquire information, ideas and learn from one another. Materials are provided for informational, personal or non-commercial use within your organization and are presented "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.