117-301 · Question #119
Often times LDAP administrators may find it is necessary to limit the number of search results from the directory. In the global section of the slapd.conf file it is possible to set both hard and…
The correct answer is B. sizelimit size.soft=10 size.hard=25. See the full explanation below for the reasoning.
Question
Options
- Asearchlimit size.soft=10 sise.hard=25
- Bsizelimit size.soft=10 size.hard=25
- Csizelimit size.hard=10 size.soft=25
- Dsearch sizelimit size.soft=10 size.hard=25
How the community answered
(70 responses)- A7% (5)
- B79% (55)
- C11% (8)
- D3% (2)
Community Discussion
5
Viktor S.Nov 17, 2025B is the right answer, and if you can remember one thing from this question, make it the directive name: sizelimit, not searchlimit, not search, not search sizelimit. OpenLDAP uses sizelimit as the keyword in slapd.conf, full stop. From there, the soft/hard modifier syntax is size.soft=N and size.hard=N, and the order does not matter to the parser, so soft=10 hard=25 is valid and so is flipping them, but C has the values reversed relative to what the question asks, making it wrong on the numbers even if the syntax were otherwise acceptable. A invents the directive name searchlimit which does not exist, and D tacks the word search in front for no reason. Learn the actual directive and the modifier names and this question becomes trivial on the job too, because you will be editing real slapd.conf files where guessing spellings costs you a failed service start.
Devraj B.Nov 23, 2025I kept reading option A first because searchlimit looked close enough to what I remembered, but the moment I matched the directive name against the slapd.conf global section docs, sizelimit locked in as the only valid keyword, and B has both the correct directive and the arguments in the right order, soft before hard.
Grace U.Nov 3, 2025B is right, and the typo in A would have tripped a lot of people. Do you remember why the directive is called "sizelimit" and not "searchlimit"?
Viktor S.Nov 3, 2025It is "sizelimit" and not "searchlimit" because the cap applies to the number of entries returned in the response, which is a property of the result set's size, not of the search operation itself, and that distinction matters because the same kind of entry-count ceiling can apply across different operation types, not just searches.
Carlos M.Nov 15, 2025B is right, the directive is "sizelimit" not "searchlimit" or "search sizelimit", and the order of soft/hard doesn't actually matter to the parser but the values here are correct with soft=10 and hard=25. Worth noting that the hard limit is the absolute ceiling the server enforces even if a client requests more, while the soft limit is the default cap that clients can ask to raise up to the hard limit.