You are correct, it is the same as the referrals option in pam_ldap. It's also the -C (sometimes -R - it seems ldapsearch options are pretty non-standard) option in ldapsearch.
As far as I'm aware you can't pass this in an LDAP URL, primarily because this never gets sent to the LDAP server. The server always returns an LDIF with inline references, this just determines if you chase them client side or just list them as is.
I could be missing something here, but using:
ldapreferrals={0|1}
Would require a three state type, as we need a way of not interfering with the library defaults? To 'enable' the new behavior here using a boolean you would need to set ldapreferrals=false - which with the normal way of dealing with config booleans would alter the default behavior if the option was not specified.
How do you feel about:
ldapdisablereferrals=(0|1)
I agree with Peter that the negative thing is bad. l don't see the problem, really. If you don't specify it, you rely on library defaults. If you do specify it, we lock it to that setting. I don't see the need to specifically have a setting to rely on library defaults - just remove it from the line and you get that.
