topic 'New User' button gone for admin user in Alfresco Archive

'New User' button gone for admin user

jfrench — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 23:51:41 GMT

Can anyone think of why this would occur:[1] I login to Alfresco (1.4) running as a portlet in JBoss Portal as the "admin" user.[2] I navigate to the Manage Systems User page.[3] Searching for users to edit works just fine[4] But!! The "Create new user" button is NOT displayed. I know that there use

Re: 'New User' button gone for admin user

gavinc — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 09:46:03 GMT

This will happen if you are using an external authentication mechanism i.e. LDAP. As users are not being maintained in the Alfresco database it does not make sense to be able to create users, hence the missing link.

Re: 'New User' button gone for admin user

jfrench — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 16:47:40 GMT

Thanks for your reply. This makes sense, however could you elaborate on exactly how Alfresco determines whether or not a particular installation is using an external authentication mechanism?

Re: 'New User' button gone for admin user

gavinc — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 09:32:09 GMT

Yes, a variable is placed in the http session that indicates that an external mechanism is being used. This variable is added by the NTLM authentication filter and the Novell iChains filter, so I'm presuming you're using one of these?

Re: 'New User' button gone for admin user

jfrench — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 16:13:35 GMT

Ahhh! Thanks Gavinc. This makes a lot of sense. I am using a Single Sign on solution that uses JOSSO and a apache bridges PortletFilter in Jboss Portal that I rolled myself. See details here: http://forums.alfresco.com/viewtopic.php?p=13165#13165

Because I copied some of my code for the PortletFilter from the NTLM Authentication Servlet Filter, the LoginBean.LOGIN_EXTERNAL_AUTH session attribute was being set to TRUE.

BTW: There is a bug in Alfresco in regard to the LoginBean.LOGIN_EXTERNAL_AUTH: Alfresco only checks for the presence/absence of the the LoginBean.LOGIN_EXTERNAL_AUTH session attribute instead of its value. This means that the attribute can equal Boolean.FALSE but NOT display the "Create user" button.

Re: 'New User' button gone for admin user

gavinc — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 10:47:50 GMT

Yes, you're quite right we don't check the value. I have raised this issue in JIRA: http://issues.alfresco.com/browse/AWC-1029