Very Basic Overview

idP (Identity Provider): A web-based system that can authenticate a user on behalf of another system called SP (for Service Provider).

In the present case, the SP consists of the Shibboleth SP version 3 software. See https://shibboleth.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SP3/overview .

Upon successful login at the idP, the idP will send information about the user back to the SP as "attributes" – in the present case, at least "remote_user".

Among other things, The SP must be configured to specify which of these attributes should be passed to the shrine code (in the form of request headers).

Installation Layout

The following instructions assume that (1) you are using Tomcat as your application server, and (2) Apache and Tomcat are running on the same host.

Ideally the following layout is used:

/opt/shrine/tomcat ← Tomcat home

/etc/shibboleth ← Shibboleth configuration files

/etc/httpd/* ← Apache configuration files

 /var/www/html ← Apache static content as set in, for instance, /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Quick Shibboleth Instructions for Adjusting Configuration 

The following instructions are meant to get you going as quickly as possible. If you want to understand what's going on, go to the next section of this document.

There are five configuration files that need to go on the host that is running shibd (Shibboleth SP). They will be installed upon installing Shibboleth SP, and they need to be overlayed/modified to reflect your installation, as follows:

Each of these files needs to be adjusted to the particulars of your site, your requirements. 

You can search for the marker: 'ADJUST_FOR_YOUR_SITE' in those files for indications of what / where you need to edit.

More-Detailed Discussion of Shibboleth, Apache, and Tomcat Configuration

Here we discuss key items in the various configuration files; not necessarily the items that need to be modified but those that deserve an explanation.

Apache Configuration

/etc/httpd/conf.d/sp.conf

ServerName should be set to your SP host's name, for instance my-shibboleth-sp-host.net:

ServerName shrine-sso-node01.catalyst.harvard.edu

The following tells Apache to proxy all calls to a URL starting with "shrine-api" to http://127.0.0.1:8080/shrine-api/. Therefore we need to set up Tomcat to listen for HTTP traffic on port 8080 (see Tomcat Configuration below)

ProxyPassReverse "/shrine-api/" "http://127.0.0.1:8080/shrine-api/"
ProxyPass "/shrine-api/" "http://127.0.0.1:8080/shrine-api/"

The following tells Apache to use Shibboleth for authentication for any URL starting with "shrine-api":

<LocationMatch "/shrine-api/">
  AuthType shibboleth
  ShibRequestSetting requireSession 1
  Require valid-user local

The following tells Shibboleth to make the attributes it collects from the idP available as request headers in Apache. This is the opposite of what is recommended, i.e. the Shibboleth documentation says that ideally ShibUseEnvironment should be On and ShibUseHeaders should be Off. However the recommended setup requires proxying to Tomcat using the AJP protocol, which we are not using because it is being phased out of Tomcat (so we are proxying using the HTTP protocol). Also, see https://shibboleth.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SHIB2/pages/2577072327/NativeSPApacheConfig.

  ShibUseEnvironment Off

  ShibUseHeaders On

</LocationMatch>

Shibboleth Configuration

Shibboleth consists of a Daemon plus an apache module. This Apache module must be configured for Shibboleth to intercept certain requests. When a request is intercepted, Shibboleth will decide whether the user (1) needs to login at the configured idP (which will present a login form to the user), or (2) is already logged in (and Shibboleth will let the request be served as if it wasn't there to intercept it)

/etc/shibboleth/shibboleth2.xml

entityID: the ID of our Service Provider (SP)

REMOTE_USER: how REMOTE_USER will be populated. Note that "ecommonsid which is specific to HMS IT, comes first, so REMOTE_USER will be set to its value). Otherwise, the first attribute name that matches an attribute returned by the idP will be used.

    <ApplicationDefaults entityID="https://shrine-sso-node01.catalyst.harvard.edu"
                         REMOTE_USER="ecommonsid eppn uid persistent-id targeted-id"
                         signing="true"
    >

TBD

<!--
Controls session lifetimes, address checks, cookie handling, and the protocol handlers.
You MUST supply an effectively unique handlerURL value for each of your applications.
The value defaults to /Shibboleth.sso, and should be a relative path, with the SP computing
a relative value based on the virtual host. Using handlerSSL="true", the default, will force
the protocol to be https. You should also set cookieProps to "https" for SSL-only sites.
Note that while we default checkAddress to "false", this has a negative impact on the
security of your site. Stealing sessions via cookie theft is much easier with this disabled.
-->
<Sessions lifetime="28800" timeout="3600" relayState="ss:mem"
checkAddress="false" handlerSSL="true" cookieProps="https">

The following specifies the entityID of the idP to use for authentication. We also specify that we speak only SAML2 protocol.

            <SSO entityID="http://sso.med.harvard.edu/adfs/services/trust">
                SAML2
            </SSO>

When logging out, only log out of the local Shibboleth session.

<Logout>Local</Logout>

Setting the status-reporting-service to "/Shibboleth.sso/Status"

<Handler type="Status" Location="/Status"/>

Setting the session diagnostic service to "/Shibboleth.sso/Session"

<Handler type="Session" Location="/Session" showAttributeValues="true"
contentType="application/json"
/>

The idP's metadata is stored in a file call idp-metadata.xml. It should be obtained from the idP admin/maintainer.

<MetadataProvider type="XML" validate="true" path="idp-metadata.xml"/>

The attribute-map.xml file will specify which attributes are extracted from the idP's response and the name of the request headers they will be available as (to the java code). More on this file later.

<AttributeExtractor type="XML" validate="true" reloadChanges="false" path="attribute-map.xml"/>

We left this and file(s) it points to unchanged:

<AttributeResolver type="Query" subjectMatch="true"/>
<AttributeFilter type="XML" validate="true" path="attribute-policy.xml"/>

We created a key pair:

<CredentialResolver type="File" key="/etc/shibboleth/sp-key.pem" certificate="/etc/shibboleth/sp-cert.pem"/>

We left this and file(s) it points to unchanged:

<SecurityPolicyProvider type="XML" validate="true" path="security-policy.xml"/>
<ProtocolProvider type="XML" validate="true" reloadChanges="false" path="protocols.xml"/>

Our Shibboleth configuration has been pared down to the essential ( ? ). If needed, for instance if we want to add functionality to our Shibboleth installation, refer to shibboleth2.xml.dist

File idp-metadata.xml

Get from your IdP (Probably do not (need to) distribute ours)

File attribute-map.xml

<Attributes xmlns="urn:mace:shibboleth:2.0:attribute-map" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

    
    <!--    The 'name' attributes need to match exactly what your IdP sends in 
            its response to your (successful) AuthnRequest
            
            E.g.
    -->
    <Attribute name="ecommonsId" id="ecommonsid"/>
    <Attribute name="Email" id="email"/>
    <Attribute name="Firstname" id="firstname"/>
    <Attribute name="Lastname" id="lastname"/>

</Attributes>

Tomcat Configuration

Tomcat should accept requests on port 8080, but only from localhost, and redirect to the SSL port 6443:

<Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"

               connectionTimeout="20000"

               redirectPort="6443" />

Configure port 6443:

    <Connector port="6443" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol"
               maxThreads="150" SSLEnabled="true" scheme="https" secure="true">
        <SSLHostConfig clientAuth="none" sslProtocol="TLS" sslEnabledProtocols="TLSv1.3,TLSv1.2"
               honorCipherOrder="true" ciphers="TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384,TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256,
               TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384,
               TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256">
            <Certificate certificateKeystoreFile="/opt/shrine/shrine.keystore"
                         certificateKeystorePassword="changeit"
                         certificateKeyAlias="*.catalyst.harvard.edu" />
        </SSLHostConfig>
    </Connector>

Some help might come from 

----------------------------------------------------------------
How to configure Tomcat to only listen to 127.0.0.1?
The environment is Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS running Tomcat 6 and Apache 2.2 from the repos. Apache is configured to proxy requests to Tomcat, so I really want to turn off Tomcat listening to requests on
2:52

<Connector address="127.0.0.1" port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
----------------------------------------------------------------

• Set up a listener on port 8080
• Accessing data received from the idP (Request Headers)

shibboleth2.xml

attribute-map.xml

sp.conf

Shrine Application Configuration

shrine.conf

shrineSP.conf

Serving Metadata

Certificate

Developer tools

• SAML 

Appendix: a Decent Book