4 Network Working Group P. Masarati
5 Internet-Draft Politecnico di Milano
6 Intended status: Standards Track October 2008
10 LDAP "What Failed?" Control
11 draft-masarati-ldap-whatfailed.txt
15 By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any
16 applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware
17 have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes
18 aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79.
20 Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
21 Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that
22 other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
25 Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
26 and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
27 time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
28 material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
30 The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
31 http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt.
33 The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
34 http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
36 This Internet-Draft will expire on April 4, 2009.
55 Masarati Expires April 4, 2009 [Page 1]
57 Internet-Draft LDAP WHATFAILED October 2008
62 This document describes the LDAP "What Failed?" control. This
63 control allows DUAs to request, in response to a failed operation
64 request, the object identifier of those extensions that caused the
70 1. Background and Intended Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
71 2. LDAP "What Failed?" Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
72 2.1. Control Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
73 2.2. Control Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
74 2.3. Control Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
75 3. Implementation Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
76 4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
77 5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
78 5.1. Object Identifier Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
79 6. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
80 7. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
81 7.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
82 7.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
83 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
84 Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 11
111 Masarati Expires April 4, 2009 [Page 2]
113 Internet-Draft LDAP WHATFAILED October 2008
116 1. Background and Intended Use
118 The LDAP Protocol [RFC4510] is extensible. Extensions include
119 controls, extended requests and extensions related to other aspects
120 of the protocol, for example those described in [RFC4526], [RFC4529]
123 Operations may fail for different reasons. The resultCode may help
124 in determining the reason of a failure. The (optional)
125 diagnosticsMessage fields of a LDAPResponse could also be of help.
126 However, according to [RFC4511], implementations MUST NOT rely on the
127 returned values, which are simply intended to be presented as are to
130 In case of failure related to the inability to process a control
131 marked as critical in a request, the specific resultCode
132 unavailableCriticalExtension is returned. In case of failure related
133 to an unrecognized extendedReq, the generic resultCode protocolError
134 is returned. Failures related to handling other extensions may
135 result in other generic resultCode values.
137 As a consequence, DUAs may be unable to exactly determine what
138 extension, if any, caused a failure. The "What Failed?" control
139 represents a means for the DSA to inform DUAs about what specific
140 extensions, if any, caused an error notified by the DSA.
142 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
143 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
144 document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
167 Masarati Expires April 4, 2009 [Page 3]
169 Internet-Draft LDAP WHATFAILED October 2008
172 2. LDAP "What Failed?" Control
174 2.1. Control Semantics
176 The presence of the "What Failed?" LDAP control in a LDAP request
177 indicates that the DUA, in case of error, wishes to receive detailed
178 information about what extension, if any, caused the error.
180 The criticality of the control in the request SHOULD be FALSE.
181 According to the semantics of the criticality field as indicated in
182 [RFC4511], this ensures that in case the control is not recognized by
183 the DSA, it does not cause itself an error.
185 The presence of this control in a request does not guarantee that the
186 DSA will return detailed information about what extensions caused an
187 error. Considering the requirement on the criticality of the
188 control, the DSA MAY simply choose to ignore the control. The DSA
189 MAY hide information about failure in handling an extension to
190 prevent disclosure of other information. The DSA MAY choose to
191 notify an error as soon as it is detected, instead of proceed
192 checking its ability to handle any other extension present in a
195 Implementations may choose to check the validity of extensions,
196 including controls, as soon as they are parsed. As a consequence, a
197 critical control might result in an error before thw "What Failed?"
198 control request is parsed. Implementations SHOULD check anyway the
199 presence of this control, unless they detect that the remaining part
200 of the request is malformed. Clients SHOULD NOT rely on any specific
201 ordering of controls handling when requesting the "What Failed?"
206 The controlType is whatFailed-oid; the controlValue MUST be absent;
207 the criticality SHOULD be FALSE.
209 2.3. Control Response
211 The controlType is whatFailed-oid; the controlValue is:
213 controlValue ::= SET OF oid LDAPOID
215 If the set of extension OID is empty, the control is omitted from the
216 response. The criticality SHOULD be FALSE.
223 Masarati Expires April 4, 2009 [Page 4]
225 Internet-Draft LDAP WHATFAILED October 2008
228 3. Implementation Notes
230 The "What Failed?" LDAP Control is implemented in OpenLDAP software
231 using the temporary OID 1.3.6.1.4.1.4203.666.5.17 under OpenLDAP's
232 experimental OID arc.
279 Masarati Expires April 4, 2009 [Page 5]
281 Internet-Draft LDAP WHATFAILED October 2008
284 4. Security Considerations
286 Implementations MUST take measures to prevent the disclosure of
287 sensible information whenever this may result from disclosing what
288 extension caused an error. This can consist in excluding the OID of
289 specific extensions from the controlValue in the response, or in
290 entirely omitting the control in the response.
335 Masarati Expires April 4, 2009 [Page 6]
337 Internet-Draft LDAP WHATFAILED October 2008
340 5. IANA Considerations
342 5.1. Object Identifier Registration
344 It is requested that IANA register upon Standards Action an LDAP
345 Object Identifier for use in this technical specification.
347 Subject: Request for LDAP OID Registration
348 Person & email address to contact for further information:
349 Pierangelo Masarati <ando@OpenLDAP.org>
351 Author/Change Controller: IESG
353 Identifies the LDAP "What Failed?" Control request
391 Masarati Expires April 4, 2009 [Page 7]
393 Internet-Draft LDAP WHATFAILED October 2008
447 Masarati Expires April 4, 2009 [Page 8]
449 Internet-Draft LDAP WHATFAILED October 2008
454 7.1. Normative References
456 [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
457 Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
459 [RFC4510] Zeilenga, K., "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
460 (LDAP): Technical Specification Road Map", RFC 4510,
463 [RFC4511] Sermersheim, J., "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
464 (LDAP): The Protocol", RFC 4511, June 2006.
466 7.2. Informative References
468 [RFC4526] Zeilenga, K., "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
469 (LDAP) Absolute True and False Filters", RFC 4526,
472 [RFC4529] Zeilenga, K., "Requesting Attributes by Object Class in
473 the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol", RFC 4529,
503 Masarati Expires April 4, 2009 [Page 9]
505 Internet-Draft LDAP WHATFAILED October 2008
511 Politecnico di Milano
512 Dipartimento di Ingegneria Aerospaziale
517 Phone: +39 02 2399 8309
518 Fax: +39 02 2399 8334
519 Email: ando@OpenLDAP.org
520 URI: http://www.aero.polimi.it/masarati/
559 Masarati Expires April 4, 2009 [Page 10]
561 Internet-Draft LDAP WHATFAILED October 2008
564 Full Copyright Statement
566 Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2008).
568 This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions
569 contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors
570 retain all their rights.
572 This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
573 "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS
574 OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY, THE IETF TRUST AND
575 THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS
576 OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF
577 THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
578 WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
581 Intellectual Property
583 The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
584 Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to
585 pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
586 this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
587 might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has
588 made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information
589 on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be
590 found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.
592 Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
593 assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
594 attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
595 such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
596 specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at
597 http://www.ietf.org/ipr.
599 The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
600 copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
601 rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
602 this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at
615 Masarati Expires April 4, 2009 [Page 11]