OpenLDAP slapd.conf substitutions - Ubuntu

Question

I was trying to configure the default directory tree on a clean OpenLDAP install on Ubuntu (apt-get install slapd).

I found /usr/share/slapd/slapd.conf and was going to change the suffix setting, and noticed that there is some kind of token substitution going on - @SUFFIX@ and @BACKEND@.

How do these tokens get substituted - and where are the values provided?

Answer 1

slapd.conf is not being used in this case. Instead, the config (OLC) backend is being used under cn=config.

The easiest way to change the default DIT root was to re-run the configuration:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure slapd

Then answer the "domain" question differently. After clearing out the old LDAP contents and restarting slapd, I got the change from dc=nodomain to dc=whatever.