topic Labs 3c + external AD auth + SSO... Need some direction in Alfresco Archive

Labs 3c + external AD auth + SSO... Need some direction

meansartin14 — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:29:39 GMT

Alfresco Platform: Alfresco Community Labs 3c Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 MySQL 5.0.45-community MySQL Community Edition (GPL) (NOTE: Came with RHEL 5.2) Tomcat 5.5.23 (comes with Alfresco) Java 6 Update 11 (jdk1.6.0_11)End-user Workstations: OS: Windows XP Professional (majority are 32

Re: Labs 3c + external AD auth + SSO... Need some direction

t_broyer — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:27:58 GMT

External authentication only externalizes… authentication. Users are still stored within Alfresco, just that their passwords aren't and Alfresco delegates authentication to an external source.

Actually, AFAICT, users are created in Alfresco only when they first log in. However, you can optionnally synchronize (import) your users' into Alfresco (along with their first/last name, email address, etc.) from your AD (see the ldap-synchronisation-context.xml.sample in tomcat/shared/classes/alfresco/extension).

Anyway, users will end up existing within Alfresco so you'll be able to add them to groups.

Re: Labs 3c + external AD auth + SSO... Need some direction

meansartin14 — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:14:17 GMT

External authentication only externalizes… authentication. Users are still stored within Alfresco, just that their passwords aren't and Alfresco delegates authentication to an external source.

Actually, AFAICT, users are created in Alfresco only when they first log in. However, you can optionnally synchronize (import) your users' into Alfresco (along with their first/last name, email address, etc.) from your AD (see the ldap-synchronisation-context.xml.sample in tomcat/shared/classes/alfresco/extension).

Anyway, users will end up existing within Alfresco so you'll be able to add them to groups.

Excellent. As soon as I get the System Admins to apply steps 1 through 8 of Configuring the CIFS and web servers for Kerberos/AD integration, I will proceed with steps 9 through 11 and give it a try.

I will also go take a look at the ldap-synchronisation-context.xml.sample file to see if it'd be an easy import of the rest of the information. Does this require any further configuration on the Alfresco server (e.g. LDAP)? I do not have (and would prefer not to have) LDAP configured to operate on the Alfresco server currently.

Thank you for the help!!

Re: Labs 3c + external AD auth + SSO... Need some direction

meansartin14 — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:43:17 GMT

I now have external AD authentication for Alfresco active and functioning properly for the Web interface! Thank you very much for the help!!

CIFS is still behaving properly, but I'm fairly certain this is not due to an Alfresco configuration/issue. (see my other thread, if you're interested: http://forums.alfresco.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=15888)

One thing I need to know: how do you login as "admin" when you're using external authentication?

Re: Labs 3c + external AD auth + SSO... Need some direction

zaizi — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:05:37 GMT

To define admin users: http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Configuring_NTLM#Enabling_NTLM_users

Re: Labs 3c + external AD auth + SSO... Need some direction

meansartin14 — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:06:27 GMT

To define admin users: http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Configuring_NTLM#Enabling_NTLM_users

I guess well. I had already done that with my own username prior to seeing your post and it works perfectly.

Thank you all very much. Thanks to your help, Alfresco is now authenticating via a remote Active Directory server for the Web Interface.

Now if I can just get our Windows XP client PCs to allow the CIFS server to be mapped as a network drive… Anyone have any experience in that arena? Take a look at my other thread here, if so: http://forums.alfresco.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=15888

Re: Labs 3c + external AD auth + SSO... Need some direction

meansartin14 — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:35:10 GMT

I have started a thread that I hope to eventually turn into a AlfrescoWiki page for how to configure Active Directory authentication for both CIFS and the Web Interface in Alfresco Labs 3c.

Please see my thread:
[ERROR]Alfresco Engineers: CIFS auth does not work. Sugg?

Please come join in the discussion, or at least subscribe to the thread. I want to try to get everyone having these types of issues into the thread so that we can get a large collection of experiences and configurations.

We WILL find the answer for how to enable Active Directory authentication with CIFS in Alfresco!!