I believe that user authentication has not yet been added for the portal - a long-standing issue - and as we desperately need the help desk I need to get going with LDAP. I've found many sketchy old posts about it but nothing comprehensive for the noob; people probably get it working and forget to come back with the solution.
We don't use Active Directory Services on our Windows 2008 server. Given that the only reason I'd be going down this road is for my Spiceworks portal, I really don't want to install any more roles or software than we need.
That said, I followed MS directions and installed AD Lightweight Directory Services with the (mis?)understanding that I can use that standalone for LDAP and SW authentication. Using the tools I can connect, bind and even add (using ADSI Edit) data on the local machine, but cannot get a stable connection from anything else, e.g., from an LDAP Outlook address book on another computer. I figure I have to at least get that far before I attempt Spiceworks.
I seem to be hung up on the whole domain controller issue and that there isn't one when just using LDS. Must I install Active Directory (dcpromo) in order to use LDS and LDAP for SW? The MS directions and other references seem to suggest that LDS is exactly for our scenario, but other references are not clear.
I would think that with the continuing absence of user authentication, a featured article about how to set this up (for those that aren't using the sophistication of full-blown AD) would go a long way. I realize that my question is probably driven more to the Windows side of things than Spiceworks, but considering the number of people I found here in the same boat, maybe a AD-LDS-LDAP-SW primer might be useful. My apologies if one exists; I've searched and searched and haven't found anything complete and/or explicit.
~Jeanne