The import-ldif command line tool imports data from an LDIF file. You can import all or a portion of the entries contained in the LDIF file, including a subset of the entries, a subset of the attributes within entries, or both. The command also supports importing data that has been compressed, encrypted or digitally signed, or both.

You can run import-ldif with the server offline or online. If the server is online, administrators can initiate the import from a local or remote client. The LDIF file that contains the import data must exist on the server system. During an online import, the target database repository, or backend, is removed from service and data held in that backend is not available to clients.

Note:

The import-ldif tool guards against the accidental overwriting of existing backend data. When importing data into a backend with a branch that already contains entries, to overwrite the entries in the branch, you must include the --overwriteExistingEntries option. If a branch contains just a single base entry, you don't need to include this option.

The tool also rejects any entries that contain duplicate values within the same attribute. To make import-ldif treat these types of entries as if each attribute value is only provided once, include the --ignoreDuplicateAttributeValues option.