1 Shibboleth 2 SP for Debian
5 This package provides the Shibboleth Apache module and accompanying
6 daemon for a service provider. In Shibboleth terminology, this is a web
7 server serving some content that should be secured via Shibboleth. In
8 order for someone to access protected content from a Shibboleth SP, they
9 will have to authenticate to a Shibboleth IdP (Identity Provider),
10 either one that the Shibboleth SP points to directly or one that is part
11 of a federation that is trusted by the Shibboleth SP.
13 This is the Shibboleth 2 version of the SP. For the 1.x version of
14 the Shibboleth SP (if it is still available), see libapache-mod-shib.
16 Installation and Configuration
18 After installing this package, the module is available but not enabled.
19 It's not enabled automatically since some configuration is required
20 before it will work (at least creating a certificate for the SP to use
21 to authenticate to IdPs).
23 To generate a self-signed certificate for the Shibboleth SP, run
24 shib-keygen. See its manual page for more information. This may or may
25 not be what you want to do depending on which federation you plan on
26 joining; some federations may want you to follow other procedures for
27 generating a certificate.
29 The default error messages from Shibboleth are located in
30 /etc/shibboleth/*.html. The paths to those error messages are
31 configured in /etc/shibboleth/shibboleth2.xml in the <Errors> tag. If
32 you customize them, you may want to copy them somewhere else and change
33 /etc/shibboleth/shibboleth2.xml to point to the new locations. Also in
34 that <Errors> tag you can set the URLs to the logo and style sheet used
35 by the default errors. If you want to use the default URL (under
36 /shibboleth-sp), add this to your Apache configuration:
38 <Location /shibboleth-sp>
41 Alias /shibboleth-sp/main.css /usr/share/shibboleth/main.css
42 Alias /shibboleth-sp/logo.jpg /usr/share/shibboleth/logo.jpg
44 For Shibboleth to work properly, you will need to extensively customize
45 /etc/shibboleth/shibboleth2.xml for your site. In particular, the
46 <ApplicationDefaults> section will have to be customized for the
47 federations your SP will trust and the <CredentialResolver> section of
48 <Applications> needs to list the credentials that your SP will use to
49 authenticate when communicating with IdPs. Your local site may provide
50 a standard shibboleth2.xml for you to use.
52 Finally, you will want to protect some web content with Shibboleth. The
53 most basic configuration is:
57 ShibRequestSetting requireSession 1
61 for some <Location>, <Directory>, or <Files> block. You can also put
62 similar code in an .htaccess file. This will require authorization
63 using the default federation defined in /etc/shibboleth/shibboleth2.xml.
65 Changes in Debian Package
67 The logging configuration for the native.log file has been changed to
68 use syslog, since the upstream default tries to write to a file that
69 Apache has no privileges to write to. See /etc/shibboleth/native.logger
70 for more details. If you want the other parts of Shibboleth to also log
71 to syslog, change the other /etc/shibboleth/*.logger files similarly.
73 The WS-Trust.xsd schema, which is needed if you use the ADFS support
74 and turn on schema validation, was removed from the Debian package for
75 license reasons. To enable it again, do the following:
77 1. Download the original source from
78 http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/downloads/shibboleth/cppsp/latest/
80 2. Extract schemas/WS-Trust.xsd to some convenient location, for
81 example to /etc/shibboleth/WS-Trust.xsd.
83 3. Copy /usr/share/xml/shibboleth/catalog.xml into /etc/shibboleth.
85 4. Uncomment the WS-Trust line and set its uri attribute:
86 <system systemId="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/02/trust"
87 uri="/etc/shibboleth/WS-Trust.xsd"/>
89 5. Edit /etc/default/shibd to contain
90 DAEMON_OPTS="$DAEMON_OPTS -x /etc/shibboleth/catalog.xml:/usr/share/xml/opensaml/saml20-catalog.xml:/usr/share/xml/xmltooling/catalog.xml"
92 6. Restart the Shibboleth daemon: /etc/init.d/shibd restart.
96 If you don't have a local Shibboleth Federation you can easily join but
97 want to test your Shibboleth installation, you can use the TestShib
98 federation (which exists primarily for this purpose). To do this, use
99 the following instructions (but test them against the details on the
100 testshib.org web pages in case anything has changed):
102 1. Go to <http://testshib.org/>, click on Register, and log in with
103 either OpenIDP or ProtectNetwork. If you do not have an identity
104 with either, create one following the links on that page.
106 2. Click on New Service Provider (unless you've already created an entry
107 for this host, in which case select Edit and reuse it). Enter your
108 hostname, your public certificate, and your first and last name, and
109 then click on Continue. Verify the information and click on Submit.
111 3. Now select Configure, scroll down to Service Provider Configuration,
112 choose Other for the platform, enter your hostname, and click on
113 Create Me. Save the resulting configuration file as
114 /etc/shibboleth/shibboleth2.xml.
116 4. Create some part of your web site that's protected with Shibboleth as
117 described above, restart Apache with apache2ctl restart, restart
118 shibd with /etc/init.d/shibd restart, and then go to that URL. You
119 should be redirected to the testshib.org IdP, and then get a basic
120 auth dialog box prompting for a username and password. Enter
121 "myself" and "myself". You should now be redirected back to your
122 protected page. The best test page to use is a CGI script that
123 prints out the environment; you can then confirm that you see the
124 Shibboleth attributes as environment variables. If this doesn't work
125 immediately, wait a few minutes and try again; sometimes the
126 testshib.org metadata takes a little bit to update.
128 These directions should work as of June 2008, but note that the
129 testshib.org service may have changed since then. TestShib is useful
130 *only* for testing, not for any production use. Those of us who have
131 worked on the Debian package are not affiliated with testshib.org, just
132 personally find it useful, and make no guarantees that it will work
133 properly. You should read over the shibboleth2.xml file that you
134 download from testshib.org before using it to make sure that there's
135 nothing strange in it.
137 If the above instructions don't work or there are changes in the
138 TestShib service, please file a bug against the Debian
139 libapache2-mod-shib2 package and let us know.
143 For further installation information, see:
145 https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/SHIB2/Home
147 and in particular the "Configuration" link.
149 -- Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>, Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:06:57 -0800