Creating referrals

Create a smart referral by adding an entry with the referral and extensibleObject object classes or adding the object classes to a specific entry.

About this task

The referral object class designates the entry as a referral object. The extensibleObject object class allows you to match the target entry by matching any schema attribute. The following example shows how to set up a smart referral if a portion of a directory information tree (DIT) is located on another server.

To create a referral:

Steps

Create an LDIF file with an entry that contains the referral and extensibleObject object classes.

Example:

dn: ou=EngineeringTeam1,ou=People,dc=example,dc=com
objectClass: top
objectClass: referral
objectClass: extensibleObject
ou: Engineering Team1
ref: ldap://server2.example.com:6389/ou=EngineeringTeam1,ou=People,dc=example,dc=com

On the first server, add the referral entry using the ldapmodify command.

Example:
```
$ bin/ldapmodify --defaultAdd --fileName referral-entry.ldif
```

To verify the addition, search for a user.

Example:

$ bin/ldapsearch --baseDN ou=People,dc=example,dc=com "(uid=user.4)"

Result:

SearchReference(referralURLs={ldap://server2.example.com:6389/
ou=EngineeringTeam1,ou=People,dc=example,dc=com??sub?})