openldap-data log files

[mkalien]

Every now and then we rewrite all the users general information (phone, email, title, etc…) from a data dump we get from our ERP. This has caused so many log files to be created in /var/db/openldap/openldap-data that the boot volume has filled up. OD servers don’t do well with a full hard drive so I need to know if I can delete these files (or at least the older ones). Anyone know if this is ok to do? I already have a script that checks the hard drive space and will run the appropriate commands if the hard drive starts to get close to full. The problem is that I don’t know what’s safe to delete. I’ve deleted all the log files before but then the slapd won’t launch and the slapd.log file shows errors about missing log files.

[mkalien]

I just love answering my own questions! 😉

So I found out that Apple now packages standard bdb tools with OS X Server. I sort of knew this already but I didn’t know how to use them or what they did. Looking closer, there’s a command called db_archive that will tell you which log files are no longer active. You can use this to automatically delete log files that aren’t needed or you can get a list of which ones are required for catastrophic failures. There are several good options here. Considering I don’t use the archive feature in WGM (I just backup the password server db and rely on replicas for the ldap information) I may start taking snapshots of the bdb files and archiving to the non-active log files to another volume so I can still use it for future db_recover commands as needed.

If anyone has good references for OD backup and maintenance best practices I could probably use a good refresher. It must be scriptable though. Also, if anyone can point me to more information on what each of the files in /var/db/openldap/openldap-data are and how they are used, please post them. I wish Apple provided more documentation on bdb. Even the technician I got through one of my escalated incidents using the Server Software Support: Select agreement said he hadn’t ever used the bdb tools included with OSXS.

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