Houston, we have a problem

Well, after a rather long gap, mostly due to studies and other commitments, I'm finally mucking around with Citadel again.

I tried adding a line containing the ldap_start_tls_s() function in the function CtdlConnectToLdap() between the ldap_connect() and the ldap_bind() statements. But, it didn't work. Apparently it gives the LDAP_CONNECT_ERROR (Error code 91).

Now, I think I'll have to fiddle with ldap_connect() to figure out the problem. I don't understand. The same changes worked on version 6.25, and I'm now using 6.40 because the latest version of WebCit i.e. version 6.63 required it. Oh well, let's hope this gets resolved quickly.

Practice makes perfect?

Well, the DUCS system administrator, Keyur, decided to give us a surprise for the new year by reinstalling our OSes, which meant that the trial installation on gyro was wrecked. Also, my own login wasn't working. So,the trial installation has been shifted to launchpad, for reasons including "It seemed to have more stuff up".

Any how, I start installing with all the usual stuff. Only thing is, thanks to Keyur, there is less stuff now than there was the first time I tried. So here's the complete list of packages I needed to install.

• gettext
• byacc
• make (Would you believe that!!)
• db4.3-util
• libdb4.3
• libdb4.3-dev
• libldap2-dev

The rest of the process was pretty much the same. One fact I had forgotten to mention in my previous posts was the fact that I had to create a link to libical.so.0 in /lib/ as the libical installation process puts it in /usr/local/lib/ (For the uninitiated, libical is required for the calendar service to work).

Now, that this is done and I have a trial installation going, I can continue trying to hook it up with our LDAP server.

Mucking around

Well, I have demonstrated WebCit to Deepak Patil. and he liked it, and asked me to try writing a plugin or something that would enable it to use the LDAP logins in our setup.

This gave me an idea. I figured why not edit Citadel's login source code so that it could check up for the passwords with our LDAP server instead of with itself. I've been trying to ever since. Unfortunately, the code is a bit of a pain to analyse. There are even goto statements.

Well, let's hope my next post has something positive to report on.

Story so far

Well, Sree came across the groupware system Citadel, and since I wasn't doing anything at the time, I figured I might as well check it out. I downloaded ver 6.55 and installed it on gyro.

Next I installed the web frontend WebCit ver 6.25. This worked brilliantly & I finally saw just how powerful Citadel is.

Now what Sree & I wanted to do was include the capability to support the LDAP logins for our college. But, the required form fields for the LDAP connector never showed up. A quick trip to the support site told us that we needed the LDAP development library for Debian. This turned out to be libldap2-dev. This enabled the LDAP connector after a reinstall.

Next task, enabling calendar functions. This took more time than expected. After, installing libical ver 0.24, I reconfigured and reinstalled Citadel. I then tried to restart the Citadel server, but it didn't work because it wasn't getting the libical library where it was expected (in /lib) as it was in /usr/local/lib. A link fixed this, but the calendar still wouldn't work, even after reinstalling WebCit. I finally turned to Citadel support again, and my error was spotted. Apparently, it was due to the fact that I had not performed a 'make clean' while reinstalling WebCit. Once this was done, it worked like a dream.

Now, coming back to LDAP connection, we tried to modify the source to enable a TLS connection to the LDAP directory. But, after much headache, Sree & I decided to abandon connection to the LDAP server as the way Citadel connects to LDAP is not compatible with our setup. Instead, we might make LDAP logins visible to the OS as system logins, and Citadel which recognises system logins can take it from there.

I'm now trying to see if external mail is possible.

Further updates soon.