[Bioperl-l] Authenticating apache against LDAP

[Simon, Deborah]

First of all apologies if this is totally off the Bioperl beaten path, but I would like to squeeze the question in anyhow.... 

I have a perl module (which uses Net::LDAP) for authenticating apache against our LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) server here in house (which is actually MS Active Directory). OK this is nothing new and works fine. What I would like to do however, is try the authentication against 2 or more servers... for 2 reasons...

1) If one LDAP server is 'down' I want to check the redundant one so users are not locked out in such a case,
2) We have 2 different LDAP domains (internal and external users), and I want both to be able to authenticate.

Obviously I could just write a simple array with the list of the LDAP servers in and try to authenticate against each one in turn (which I currently do as a quick fix), but this requires I maintain an up-to-date list of servers. 

What I would really like to do is make a call to retrieve the LDAP services available in the network. Perhaps something like SLP (Service Location Protocol) .. but I am getting a bit lost now, so what I would like to ask is does anyone have experience with this kind of thing or indeed any ideas at all ?????

Many thanks, and again sorry for the off-posting,    -deb

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Deborah Simon, M.Sc.
Senior Scientist, Bioinformatics		
Ingenium Pharmaceuticals AG		Phone: +49 (0)89 8565 2335
Fraunhoferstr. 13				Fax:	 +49 (0)89 8565 2351
82152 Martinsried, Munich		Email: deborah.simon at ingenium-ag.com
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