IBM Identity Manger: Adding a new attribute

Background

The documentation on this is lacking on this topic, and the example LDIF file provided is in a format that will cause idsldapmodify to fail with a painfully obtuse error message. So I'm documenting this here to help the next person avoid some headache.

Details

Here's the documentation on how to add an attribute. In there, it provides this LDIF file as an example:

dn: cn=schema changetype: modify add: attributetypes attributetypes: ( myAttribute-oid NAME ( 'myAttribute' ) DESC 'An attribute I defined for my LDAP application' EQUALITY 2.5.13.2 SYNTAX 1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.15 {200} USAGE userApplications ) - add: ibmattributetypes ibmattributetypes: ( myAttribute-oidDBNAME ( 'myAttrTable' 'myAttrColumn' ) ACCESS-CLASS normal LENGTH 200 )

However, if you try to import that LDIF file with the idsldapmodify command given, you'll get the following error:

ldapmodify: invalid format (line 5 of entry: cn=schema)

After a bit of pain, I figured out that the whitespace in the lines are the problem. You need to either concatenate the continued lines together OR have some white space at the front of the continued lines. Additionally, there should be a space in betwee "oid" and "DBNAME". So if you change the file to the following, you will no longer get the error:

dn: cn=schema
changetype: modify
add: attributetypes
attributetypes: ( myAttribute-oid NAME ( 'myAttribute' ) DESC 'An attribute I defined for my LDAP application'    EQUALITY 2.5.13.2 SYNTAX 1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.15    {200} USAGE userApplications )
-
add: ibmattributetypes
ibmattributetypes: ( myAttribute-oid DBNAME ( 'myAttrTable' 'myAttrColumn' ) ACCESS-CLASS normal LENGTH 200 )
What about updating the objectclass?
That's what I was wondering! Simply adding an attribute doesn't really help you much until you add it as a MUST or a MAY attribute to an objectclass. IBM has an almost complete guide to doing that here, But it is incomplete. For one thing, the format of the data is wrong again. The long attribute values should all be on a single line, like this:
dn: cn=schema
changetype: modify
replace: objectclasses
objectclasses: ( 2.16.840.1.113730.3.2.2 NAME 'inetOrgPerson' DESC 'Defines entries representing people in an organizations enterprise network.' SUP 'organizationalPerson' Structural MAY ( audio $ businessCategory $ carLicense $ departmentNumber $ employeeNumber $ employeeType $ givenName $ homePhone $ homePostalAddress $ initials $ jpegPhoto $ labeledURI $ mail $ manager $ mobile $ pager $ photo $ preferredLanguage $ roomNumber $ secretary $ uid $ userCertificate $ userSMIMECertificate $ x500UniqueIdentifier $ mytest ) )
Additionally, where did that value for "objectclasses" come from?? Well, that came from this command:
ldapsearch -b cn=schema -s base objectclass=* objectclasses | grep \'inetOrgPerson\'
Running that, you will get a result similar to:
objectclasses=( 2.16.840.1.113730.3.2.2 NAME 'inetOrgPerson' DESC 'Defines entries representing people in an organizations enterprise network.' SUP organizationalPerson STRUCTURAL MAY ( audio $ businessCategory $ carLicense $ departmentNumber $ displayName $ employeeNumber $ employeeType $ givenName $ homePhone $ homePostalAddress $ initials $ jpegPhoto $ labeledURI $ mail $ manager $ mobile $ o $ pager $ photo $ preferredLanguage $ roomNumber $ secretary $ uid $ userCertificate $ userPKCS12 $ userSMIMECertificate $ x500UniqueIdentifier ) )
Modify that to include your new attribute, then put that into the LDIF file. Then run idsldapmodify to import that LDIF file into your server. After that, you'll have your new attribute added to the inetOrgPerson objectclass.