Managing Users : LDAP Authentication Method : User Password Authentication
   
User Password Authentication
The LDAP Authenticator can check the user password for authentication. The LDAP Authenticator is used only if the field Authentication Method in a user’s properties is set to LDAP. Then LDAP will check the password a user logs in with, against a login name that matches the Login Name field of the user’s properties stored in the $Users catalog. With the role-based mode of the User Manager, it is always used if the user has no record in the $Users catalog.
The LDAP Authentication module uses the simple LDAP authentication method.
To employ the LDAP authentication method for a user’s password you have to configure the following items of the LDAP.xml file:
<ns:authenticator>
        <ns:search>
The example LDAP.xml files are syntactically correct for ActiveDirectory and OpenDirectory LDAP schemes. However, they contain placeholders. In order to make your version of the LDAP.xml work, you have to replace these placeholders with real values only. If you use any LDAP scheme other than ActiveDirectory and OpenDirectory, you have to adapt the structure to the structure of your LDAP scheme also.