Urania

I have found that the folks here at Minnesota State University Moorhead are fairly operating system agnostic (unlike St. Cloud State University, which was relatively hostile to any OS not from Redmond). Usually if there is a problem, it is not because MSUM folks choose a Microsoft solution, but rather it is lack of documentation. This is one such case.

I was trying to get my Mail program to talk to the MSUM directory server. It’s not hard, but it wasn’t documented anywhere (for either MacOS or Windows). So I talked to Bill Scheffler, the local Mac guru, and in short order he produced a set of instructions which I am now placing online (with his permission).

These instructions are for Macs running the current version of MacOS X (10.4). You can probably use them to figure out what you need on other operating systems from this.

1. Open the Address Book application.
2. Select Preferences… from the Address Book menu.
3. Click on the LDAP icon in the toolbar.
4. Click the [+] button in the lower left hand corner to add an entry. Fill out the fields with the following:
   1. Name: Anything that works, I use “MSUM LDAP“
   2. Server [address]:ldap.mnstate.edu
   3. Search Base: ou=Users, dc=mnstate, dc=edu

   Once you are done, everything should look like the screenshot below:

   

5. Click the “Save” button and the LDAP section should match this screen:
   
6. Click the red close button in the top left hand corner to save changes and setup is done.

Note that when you have done this, Mail.app will automatically look up matching names in the directory as you type. However, it only works if you are connected locally to the MSUM network (or if you are connected to the MSUM VPN remotely).