What is the BASE DN for my LDAP server?

Question

I've seen alot of tutorials about ldap "basedn" which imply that you can use a generic string like

"mycompany".

However, in my case, I already have an ldap server, and the root of it seems to be:

o=Directory
   ou=groups
   ou=users

Thus, i dont see anything alont the lines of "mycompany" anywhere.

I do however have a "login" account which has been given to me :

cn=Admin,o=Directory

So - when i configure LDAP, how can i know what the right BaseDN is ? When setting up ldap authentication (1) What does Base DN refer to on my LDAP server and (2) how do I find out what that references value is?

FYI Im using authconfig-tui to connect a Red Hat linux machine to an external phpLDAPAdmin created machine configured in AWS via OpenLDAP Directory Server, provided by JumpBox - so the server side LDAP stuff has been set up for me already.

Solution

Your base DN is simply o=Directory. It is not a good practice to have such a base DN, but it is nevertheless valid.

Historically, Base DNs used to be in X.500 format, like o=<organization>,c=<countrycode>. Some existing directories still use it; for example, o=New York University,st=New York,c=US.

Nowadays, the recommended way is to use DNS naming: dc=<domain>,dc=<topdomain>
(e.g. dc=superuser,dc=com).