LDAP - Base64 encoded name - Problem

[Anto28]

Hi,

I am trying to build a expired password notification script that alerts users thru mails. For this, i am scanning the ldap with ldapsearch.

I store the results in a file. I have a problem with the punctuation (accents ) in the name of some user.

ex:
dn: cn=johnval,ou=DOE,ou=DOE,o=COM
passwordExpirationTime: 20130115191742Z
mail: John.Vallieres-somemail.com
loginGraceRemaining: 6
fullName::Sm9obiBWYWxsacOocmVzCg==

So instead of having a regular name in the fullName field... I have a base64 encoded name.

So if i use the fullName field to generate my email the user actually gets garbage instead of his real name...

I found how to decode the fullName field :

echo fullName | base64 -d

With this command i would get this result:
John Vallières

My interrogation is how to validate if the fullName is encoded in base64 or not ? I can't pass everything in base64 decode since some fullName already show correctly...

I would require some method like
isBase64encoded()

so i could do

if ( isBase64encoded($fullName) )then
fullName=`echo $fullname | decode -d`
fi

Any ideas ???

Thank you guyrs

[Anto28]

Found a solution !

i had to install base64 command to SuSE linux since it is not part of coreutils like some other distros.

Found a place to download it : w-w-w.fourmilab.ch/webtools/base64/#Download

ps : remove the - - between w... i did this because i can't add links here

When you have the file, you need to extract it:
tar -zxvf base64-1.5.tar.gz

You will need to have gcc compiler and his dependencies in order to compile base64 for your distros.
when you have the compiler....

do : ./configure
and
make install

then you have the base64 command

Now to determine if a string was base64, i had to execute the command one time and send the result to dev//null

echo $name| base64 -d >/dev/null 2>&1;
if [ $? == 0 ]; then
name=`echo $name | base64 -d`
echo "This name has punctuation (accents): $name";
fi

So basically you run the command one time and check the last code from $? to know if the command was executed properly or not !

[Anto28]

I encountered a few problem with the base64-1.5 version...

Since base64 is now part of coreutils bundle you can get it on gnu.org, i had to find a way to install only one app out of coreutils.

so to build only the base64 out of coreutil
you need to do :
./configure
cd ./lib
make
cd ../src
make version.h
make base64

Then move your base64 compiled apps into your apps location.