Hi Guys,

I've been helping Jasha with the shibboleth integration for Rave. See my 
comments inline :).

On Sep 21, 2011, at 4:21 PM, Ate Douma wrote:

> On 09/21/2011 03:52 PM, Jasha Joachimsthal wrote:
>> On 21 September 2011 15:38, Ate Douma<[email protected]>  wrote:
>> 
>>> On 09/21/2011 02:56 PM, Jasha Joachimsthal wrote:
>>> 
>>>> We've configured Rave to use our (internal) Shibboleth for authentication
>>>> using [1] as example.
>>>> The configuration is not something we can add to the demo portal to work
>>>> out
>>>> of the box but it can be documented. Are there any objections if I would
>>>> add
>>>> the (slightly modified) java code to the Rave portal?
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> I'd like to see Shibboleth *supported* by Rave.
>>> If we add code for this in "core" Rave, we should be able to use and
>>> demonstrate it, so I'd want "full" (even if only limited) support ;)
>>> Otherwise, it will not be possible by the Rave team itself to ensure and
>>> validate proper operation and behavior and actually could then become more
>>> of a problem than a benefit.
>>> 
>>> If however you only can provide a "half-way" solution, I think it might be
>>> better to keep it outside "core" Rave, e.g. only as exemplar
>>> code/configuration.
>>> 
>> 
>>> Can you enlighten us why you can't provide a complete functionality?
>>> Is it just too much work, or too dependent on the custom environment. In
>>> the latter case, what would be effort to generalize your solution which
>>> would work both for Rave and in your own environment?
>>> 
>> 
>> It depends on response headers returned by Shibboleth so you need a running
>> instance. Of course it is possible to create some demo URL that returns
>> these headers with predefined values.
> That, or having a demo/test Shibboleth server available to connect to maybe?

There aren't any test shibboleth servers since it closely integrates with a 
number of web servers (e.g. apache httpd). You normally run an httpd server 
that has a Shibboleth module. This module handles the authentication and sets a 
number of apache header attributes. The actual web application is behind the 
httpd server (e.g. using mod_proxy) so that the web application can read the 
headers. It is very important that a user cannot access the web application 
directly, for header forgery is possible that way. Hence, for a successful test 
setup somewhere on the internet you would have to have access to the httpd 
configuration.

> For instance, for OpenId authentication we don't have that running ourselves 
> either...
> 
> And, AFAIK it should be relatively easy to install/incorporate a simple 
> OpenId server ourselves inside Rave but I suspect that might not be so 
> trivial with Shibboleth.

In my opinion the best way to locally test the shibboleth configuration is to 
run a small servlet that fakes shibboleth and sets some (configurable) headers.

Regards,
Stein Welberg

> 
> 
>> 
>> Jasha
>> 
> 

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