Shibboleth: Remote Authentication Phase 1 (issue #2939)

[Philip Durbin]

The Shibboleth* feature in Dataverse 4 is still experimental, but we are kicking off a new round of development that I will be tracking in this issue:

Shibboleth: Remote Authentication Phase 1 - https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/2939

I think of that issue as the place where I am defining what is in scope for this effort and individual features or bugs are listed as sub-issues in the description. I don't expect the scope to change much at this point but I'll update the description as needed.

I just pushed some code relating to one of the sub-issues ( https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/2915 ) which is why this is on my mind. :)

Anyway, I'm actually on vacation next week so please don't expect any new code until I get back, but I wanted to let you know that Shibboleth is very much on my mind these days (and user accounts in general) and I'm happy as always to get feedback on the Shibboleth feature. Please feel free to subscribe to the parent issue (#2939) or sub-issues for updates. Comments are welcome!

Have a good weekend!

Phil

* http://guides.dataverse.org/en/4.2.4/installation/shibboleth.html

p.s. Thanks again for all the feedback on Shibboleth you've already provided at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/dataverse-community/3yfbb606EJU/gen43DkNCwAJ and elsewhere! :)

--

Philip Durbin
Software Developer for http://dataverse.org
http://www.iq.harvard.edu/people/philip-durbin

[Philip Durbin]

I just mentioned this at http://irclog.iq.harvard.edu/dataverse/2016-03-04#i_32251 but now that I'm winding down development of Shibboleth-related code for phase 1 (I'm still hoping to add more tests, which may lead to some refactoring, and there are a couple of "nice to have" issues I may try to address) I'm starting to think about how to improve the Shibboleth documentation.

I've been keeping a list at https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/2953 of Shibboleth-related things I'd like to add to the Installation Guide. If you're interested in better docs for Shibboleth, please leave a comment on that issue or reply to this email. As I work on the docs, you'll be able to see a preview of changes at http://guides.dataverse.org/en/2939-shib/installation/shibboleth.html

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or feedback!

Phil

p.s. Oh, at least one organization has expressed an interest in a pre-release war file containing updated Shibboleth code. If there's enough interest I'm happy to make these generally available. Just let me know! If it's just the one group, I'll just reply to the support ticket they opened: https://help.hmdc.harvard.edu/Ticket/Display.html?id=232147

[Philip Durbin]

The status of this "phase 1" effort for Shibboleth is that my pull request is now in, and I'm eager for feedback while this stuff is still fresh in my mind. :)

If you'd like to kick the tires on some pre-release code, I have set up a Jenkins job from which you can download a war file to deploy to a system OTHER THAN YOUR PRODUCTION SYSTEM. Please note that to run the war file, you must first upgrade to Dataverse 4.3 which contains some database changes. As of this writing, the latest build (#2) can be downloaded by clicking "dataverse-4.3.war" at https://build.hmdc.harvard.edu:8443/job/shibtest.dataverse.org-build-2939-shib/2/edu.harvard.iq$dataverse/

If you're (understandably) not interesting in fiddling with a pre-release war file but want to give feedback on docs, you can preview changes here:

- http://guides.dataverse.org/en/2939-shib/installation/shibboleth.html
- http://guides.dataverse.org/en/2939-shib/user/account.html

If you're really into this feature and want to give feedback on the code itself, comments are welcome at https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/pull/3025 . You could even make pull requests against that branch if you want. :)

Happy hacking!

Phil

[Philip Durbin]

Just a quick note that I left a comment at https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/2117#issuecomment-221587081 the other day explaining the improvements to the Shibboleth code that have made it into the "develop" branch, the next release. Lots of bug fixes but probably the most significant issues the community might care about are:

- Shib users can see their account information: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/2046

- Ability for Shib users to be converted to a local account: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/2915

- Better documentation in the Installation Guide: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/2953

- Shibboleth added to User Guide: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/2975

Nothing earth-shattering above, but I'm quite happy with all the bug fixing that went on as well. I feel like the code is in pretty good shape.

Have a nice (long) weekend!

Phil