the

Little Projects

of Shawn M. Jones

Well, so far in this little project I’ve gotten Thunderbird to successfully load contacts from my OpenLDAP server. I’ve also got it working over SSL so that all transmissions are encrypted.

My current issue: anyone can query the database of contacts!

Yip, that means when I put your address into my addressbook through LDAP, everyone else in the world can query my addressbook and get your information.

This was not what I was intending, so I’m investigating authentication with LDAP in an effort to figure out how to get Thunderbird (or any Mail client, for that matter) to authenticate before just handing over the goods. I don’t think my friends would appreciate being spammed due to my inability to lock down my contacts database.

Currently I realize that I must put the authentication information into the directory that LDAP maintains, but I’m uncertain as to how to tell LDAP to use those entries for authentication. I know how to make it a general authentication server, but I don’t really want that either. Or do I?

Any suggestions are welcome… I’m still doing the research and playing around.

One of the downfalls I currently have in my organizational system is that I have no method of keeping contact information. I collected many people’s contact information for Christmas cards this year and… well… it was on paper… and I can’t seem to find it anymore.
Keeping contact information in a paper format doesn’t seem to work.
I’ve tried keeping it in an actual physical contacts book, but then they get all mixed up and I can’t find anyone.
Electronically I’ve kept contacts in Thunderbird, VCards, Kpilot, Kontact, BitPim, and a few other programs. The problem with each of these is that my contacts stay on the computer that I’m on at the time.
I’ve also tried using my aged Sony Clie, but it couldn’t synch with my email.
It hit me this morning, I need a system where my contacts are stored in a central location accessible to all of the various programs I use.
What software offers such functionality that all of the different applications can access?
Then I thought, the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) should suffice, as it was originally designed to be a contacts service.
We’ll see how this goes. I’m not sure if it will suit my needs yet. More research is required.