I still don't see what is the actual result in that. But OK.
It says "search result" and then shows some numbers. Running the same command with an actual password also doesn't yield "actual results" for me. Are you referring to different commands?
I just double-checked, even though I was certain before. I can still do this by just SSHing into barnard, and without doing anything else, running ldapsearch -x -w $password -D 'cn=Directory Manager' -b "ou=users,dc=kosmos,dc=org" -H "ldaps://ldap.kosmos.org" -v will yield the result almost exactly as posted in the example:
I agree, fit for beginners doesn't sound as good to me. I guess that settles it then.
I cannot tell you how it's possible. Only that it happened exactly as I described. I never looked up the password or copied it anywhere.