diff --git a/doc/howto/config.rst b/doc/howto/config.rst
index be9b9cb..13a8af4 100644
--- a/doc/howto/config.rst
+++ b/doc/howto/config.rst
@@ -315,6 +315,9 @@ An example might be::
     what values on these attributes that can be returned.
 *name_form*
     Which name-form that should be used when sending assertions.
+    Using this information the attribute name in the data source will be mapped to
+    the friendly name, and the saml attribute name will be taken from the uri/oid
+    defined in the attribute map.
 
 If restrictions on values are deemed necessary those are represented by 
 regular expressions.::
@@ -612,3 +615,10 @@ A slightly more complex configuration::
     
 Uses metadata files, both local and remote, and will talk to whatever 
 IdP that appears in any of the metadata files. 
+
+Other considerations
+::::::::::::::::::::
+
+Entity Categories
+-----------------
+Entity categories and their attributes are defined in src/saml2/entity_category/<registrar of entcat>.py
diff --git a/doc/install.rst b/doc/install.rst
index 467a2cc..9d40b42 100644
--- a/doc/install.rst
+++ b/doc/install.rst
@@ -32,6 +32,7 @@ Depending on how you are going to use PySAML2 you might also need
 * repoze.who
 * python-memcache
 * memcached
+* bsddb3
 
 Quick build instructions
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
@@ -55,3 +56,41 @@ The tests are based on the pypy test environment, so::
 is what you should use. If you don't have py.test, get it it's part of pypy! 
 It's really good!
 
+Hints
+-----
+
+RHEL/CentOS installation issues
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+A number of packages may not install from pypi. Instead, you may wand to use packages supplies with the OS:
+
+    yum -y install swig openssl-devel m2crypto xmlsec1 pyOpenSSL libffi-devel
+
+OS X installation issues
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+A number of packages may not install from pypi. Instead, you may wand to use macports:
+
+    sudo port install swig xmlsec py27-m2crypto py27-crypto db53
+
+Starting with XCode 5.1 there is an issue with unrecognised gcc command line options.
+A temporary fix is described in http://alyssafrazee.com/dangit-mavericks.html
+So to install cryptography and bsddb3 you might want to try:
+sudo ARCHFLAGS=-Wno-error=unused-command-line-argument-hard-error-in-future pip install cryptography bsddb3
+
+If the message "ImportError: No module named _bsddb" pops up on starting idp.py, this fix should help:
+http://marc-abramowitz.com/archives/2007/11/28/hacking-os-xs-python-dbhash-and-bsddb-modules-to-work/
+
+
+Generate the HTML documentation
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+install Sphinx
+cd pysaml2/doc
+make html
+cd _build
+
+List implemented signature algorithms
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+For a list of xmldsig algorithtms implemented for signature validation, run this program from the command line:
+saml2/sigver.py -s
diff --git a/src/saml2/ident.py b/src/saml2/ident.py
index 8847556..0e51cc8 100644
--- a/src/saml2/ident.py
+++ b/src/saml2/ident.py
@@ -138,6 +138,7 @@ class IdentDB(object):
         try:
             _vals = self.db[userid]
         except KeyError:
+            logger.debug("failed to find userid %s in IdentDB" % userid)
             return res
 
         for val in _vals.split(" "):
diff --git a/tools/sync_attrmaps.py b/tools/sync_attrmaps.py
index 0dc8432..a067d8a 100755
--- a/tools/sync_attrmaps.py
+++ b/tools/sync_attrmaps.py
@@ -124,7 +124,7 @@ if __name__ == "__main__":
     if os.path.isfile(_name):
         directory, fname = os.path.split(_name)
         amap = AMap(directory, fname, 4 * " ")
-        f = open(_name)
+        f = open(_name, "w")
         f.write("%s" % amap)
         f.close()
     elif os.path.isdir(_name):