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LDAP Root DSE

The top of the directory information tree (DIT) on each DSA is the root of the tree.

The root contains a special entry called the root DSA-specific entry (DSE). This is specified in the LDAP [RFC4512] and therefore can only be read using the LDAP protocol.

The information provided by reading the root DSE is useful for application developers in determining information, features, and schema specific to the LDAP directory.

The following examples to retrieve root DSE information use the ldapsearch utility available on most operating systems.