Which of the following are valid choices for the LDAP database backend? (Choose THREE correct answers.)

Brenda K.Jun 27, 2026

The correct answers are B, config, C, passwd, and E, shell. These are three legitimate OpenLDAP database backends you need to have memorized cold before test day. The config backend is what backs the cn=config dynamic configuration tree, passwd reads directly from the system passwd file to serve simple directory data, and shell hands off operations to external scripts, which makes it flexible but slower. Option D, lbdm, is a trap because that older backend was deprecated and replaced by hdb and mdb, and the exam loves to bait you with near-miss spellings like that. This is a flag-and-move-on question if you know your backends, 90 seconds max, do not let it eat your clock.

Nina C.Jun 26, 2026

Yeah I got tripped up on this one at first too, but B, C, and E make sense once you think about what OpenLDAP actually supports as backends. Config is the cn=config backend that lets you manage slapd configuration dynamically, passwd hooks into the system /etc/passwd file to serve user entries, and shell delegates LDAP operations out to external scripts, which is useful for integrating with custom data sources. The "file" option and "lbdm" are just not real slapd backends, so those are the easy eliminations once you know the actual list. What helped me was remembering that OpenLDAP backends are about where and how the data is stored or retrieved, not just flat file types, which is why shell and passwd feel a little surprising at first.

Ola B.Jun 27, 2026

The trick here is D, because your brain wants to read it as "ldbm," which was a real legacy backend in older OpenLDAP builds. But the option spells it "lbdm," and that typo alone should knock it out. The real answers are config, which backs the cn=config DIT for runtime configuration, passwd, which maps /etc/passwd entries into the directory, and shell, which lets slapd shell out to external scripts for each operation. If you are fuzzy on any of these, spin up a quick OpenLDAP instance and look at the slapd-backends man page, then actually configure a passwd backend and do a search against it, because seeing that /etc/passwd data show up as LDAP entries makes it click in a way that reading about it never does.

Thiago A.Jun 27, 2026

B, C, E correct, confirm with man slapd-shell, slapd-passwd, slapd-config.

Lena V.Jun 27, 2026

Went back and forth on this one sitting in the exam room because "file" sounds so plausible when you are thinking about how OpenLDAP stores data on disk, but file is not an actual backend type in OpenLDAP's slapd. The three you want are config, passwd, and shell. Config is the backend that drives the cn=config dynamic configuration tree, passwd lets slapd read directly from the system's passwd file for simple lookups, and shell passes each LDAP operation out to an external shell script, which is the backend you reach for when you need to hook into a legacy system that has no native LDAP support. lbdm trips people up because it looks like it could be a variant of ldbm, which was a real backend in older versions, but that spelling is not valid and ldbm itself was deprecated well before this exam domain was written. When I hit this question I crossed off A and D first, confirmed the remaining three matched what I had drilled from the slapd backends section of the admin guide, and moved on. Elimination is faster than recall when the distractors are nonsense words.