5.x, LDAP and caching uid/gid data

[Ben Hockenhull]

We're in the midst of implementing a couple of FreeBSD servers, each
containing about 5k users, with authentication against LDAP.  We're using
PADL's nss_ldap and pam_ldap modules, and while things work well, I'm
looking for ways to improve performance and reduce active queries against
LDAP.

There's no user information on the local system at all, so every operation
that requires UID/GID information had to do an LDAP lookup to get UID/GID
data.  So, for example, every piece of mail delivered means an LDAP lookup.
Ick.

Is there such a thing as nscd for FreeBSD, and if so, has anyone had
experience using it?  I found a lookupd utility that looks promising, but
I'm leery of implementing it in production as it seems like fairly untested
software.

Failing nscd or a similar thing, are there other ways I can cache this
infomration or otherwise improve performance?

Thanks.

Ben