The OpenDS LDAP directory service has been designed to work well for hosted services. A single directory server can be used to store information for multiple companies either sharing the same database backend, or in separated database backends. The OpenDS tools such as dsconfig or dsreplication focus on the user visible aspect: the Naming Context, also known as the “Base DN”, the starting point of the directory information tree for a given company.

But the backends are not exposed by default, and several users have asked the question “How do I know the backend name for my suffix ?”.

The list-backends command line tool is a handy tool that you can find in the bin directory that can list the backends and suffixes of a Directory Server instance.

Below are a couple of example of use of the list-backends tool:

$ bin/list-backends

Backend ID : Base DN

—————:——————–

adminRoot : cn=admin data

ads-truststore : cn=ads-truststore

backup : cn=backups

config : cn=config

monitor : cn=monitor

schema : cn=schema

tasks : cn=tasks

userRoot : “dc=example,dc=com”

$ bin/list-backends -b “dc=example,dc=com”

The provided DN ‘dc=example,dc=com’ is a base DN for backend ‘userRoot’

You can find more details and examples on the OpenDS documentation wiki’s list-backends reference page.

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