Roller 4.0 with LDAP and CAS

This page is designed to show how to integrate Roller 4.0 with LDAP and JA-SIG Central Authentication Service. To begin, you will need to download the following:

These instructions should work on any application server, providing you're able to install Roller.

Install Roller and Test

The first step is to install Roller and ensure it works on your application server.

Install Tomcat 6 and install the MySQL JDBC Driver in its "lib" directory. Also install JavaMail's activation.jar and mail.jar.
Create a CATALINA_HOME environment variable that points to the location where you installed Tomcat.

Create a roller-custom.properties file and put it in your server's classpath ($CATALINA_HOME/lib for Tomcat 6).

installation.type=auto 
database.configurationType=jdbc 
database.jdbc.driverClass=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver 
database.jdbc.connectionURL=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/rollerdb?createDatabaseIfNotExist=true 
database.jdbc.username=root 
database.jdbc.password= 
mail.configurationType=properties 
mail.hostName=localhost

Copy apache-roller-4.0/webapps/roller to $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/roller and start Tomcat.
Go to http://localhost:8080/roller and complete the steps to add a new user and create a blog. When creating a new user, use admin for the username and admin for the password.
Test that Roller works by creating a blog entry using the web interface, or using a client like MarsEdit (Moveable Type, RPC URL: http://localhost:8080/roller/roller-services/xmlrpc, Blog ID: admin).

Install LDAP and Test

Now that you have Roller installed and working, configure it to authenticate against LDAP instead of the "rollerdb" database.

Stop Tomcat.
Install Apache Directory Server and start it as root by running "sudo /usr/local/apacheds" (on OS X).
Install Apache Directory Studio and launch the application.
Create a new LDAP Connection with the following settings:
- Connection Name: Local ApacheDS
- Hostname: localhost
- Port: 10389
- Encryption: No Encryption
- (Click Next)
- Bind DN or user: uid=admin,ou=system
- Bind password: secret
- (Click Finish)
Download roller.ldif to your Desktop. This file contains an admin account as well as Groups and People organizational units.
In Apache Directory Studio, right click on dc=example,dc=com and select Import > LDIF Import...
Select roller.ldif for the LDIF file and click Finish. You may get an error during the import, but it should add entries successfully.
Modify $CATALINA_HOME/lib/roller-custom.properties so it has a single entry:
```
users.sso.enabled=true
```
Open $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/roller/WEB-INF/security.xml in your favorite XML editor. Look for "LDAP/SSO" and uncomment the bean definitions to enable LDAP. In the "authenticationManager" bean, comment out "daoAuthenticationProvider" and enable "ldapAuthProvider". Commenting out "daoAuthenticationProvider" is not necessary, but it allows you to verify you're only authenticating against LDAP. Use the following values for the values in the "initialDirContextFactory" bean.
- LDAP_URL = ldap://localhost:10389/dc=example,dc=com
- LDAP_USERNAME = uid=admin,ou=system
- LDAP_PASSWORD = secret
While you're editing security.xml, change the "rollerlovesacegi" value to something unique to your server. Any XML-friendly characters will work. The more cryptic the better.

Create a $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/roller/META-INF/context.xml file and add the following to it:

<Context path="/roller" debug="99">
    <Resource name="jdbc/rollerdb" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource"
              driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
              url="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/rollerdb?useUnicode=true&amp;characterEncoding=utf-8&amp;mysqlEncoding=utf8"
              username="root" password=""
              maxActive="20" maxIdle="3" removeAbandoned="true" maxWait="3000"/>

    <Resource name="mail/Session" auth="Container" type="javax.mail.Session"
              mail.smtp.host="localhost"/>
</Context>

This step shouldn't be necessary because of the database settings in roller-custom.properties. This is likely a bug in Roller's configuration.

Start Tomcat and login to your blog with admin/adminldap.

These instructions have been tested and verified against OpenDS as well. The main differences are the LDAP settings. The default settings for OpenDS are:

LDAP_URL = ldap://localhost:1389/dc=example,dc=com
LDAP_USERNAME = cn=Directory Manager
LDAP_PASSWORD = password

Install CAS and Test

Install CAS by copying modules/cas.war to $CATALINA_HOME/webapps.
Navigate to http://localhost:8080/cas and login with admin/admin.

Configure Roller to talk to CAS by making the following modifications to security.xml:

In the filterChainProxy bean definition, replace "authenticationProcessingFilter,rememberMeProcessingFilter" with "casProcessingFilter".
In the authenticationManager bean, comment out the "ldapAuthProvider" and add <ref local="casAuthenticationProvider"/>.

Add the following bean definitions for Acegi-CAS integration:

<!-- ======================== CENTRAL AUTHENTICATION SERVICE (CAS) ======================= -->
<bean id="casProcessingFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.cas.CasProcessingFilter">
    <property name="authenticationManager" ref="authenticationManager"/>
    <property name="authenticationFailureUrl" value="/roller-ui/login.rol?error=true"/>
    <property name="defaultTargetUrl" value="/"/>
    <property name="filterProcessesUrl" value="/roller_j_security_check"/>
</bean>

<bean id="casProcessingFilterEntryPoint" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.cas.CasProcessingFilterEntryPoint">
    <property name="loginUrl" value="https://localhost:8443/cas/login"/>
    <property name="serviceProperties" ref="serviceProperties"/>
</bean>

<bean id="casAuthenticationProvider" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.cas.CasAuthenticationProvider">
    <property name="casAuthoritiesPopulator">
        <bean class="org.roller.ui.security.cas.RollerCasPopulator">
            <property name="userDetailsService" ref="jdbcAuthenticationDao"/>
        </bean> 
    </property>
    <property name="casProxyDecider" ref="casProxyDecider"/>
    <property name="ticketValidator" ref="casProxyTicketValidator"/>
    <property name="statelessTicketCache" ref="statelessTicketCache"/>
    <property name="key" value="my_password_for_this_auth_provider_only"/>
</bean>

<bean id="casProxyTicketValidator" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.cas.ticketvalidator.CasProxyTicketValidator">
    <property name="casValidate" value="https://localhost:8443/cas/proxyValidate"/>
    <property name="proxyCallbackUrl" value="http://localhost:8080/roller/casProxy/receptor"/>
    <property name="serviceProperties" ref="serviceProperties"/>
    <property name="trustStore" value="/Library/Java/Home/lib/security/cacerts"/>
</bean>

<bean id="cacheManager" class="org.springframework.cache.ehcache.EhCacheManagerFactoryBean"/>

<bean id="ticketCacheBackend" class="org.springframework.cache.ehcache.EhCacheFactoryBean">
   <property name="cacheManager" ref="cacheManager"/>
   <property name="cacheName" value="ticketCache"/>
</bean>

<bean id="statelessTicketCache" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.cas.cache.EhCacheBasedTicketCache">
    <property name="cache" ref="ticketCacheBackend"/>
</bean>

<bean id="casProxyDecider" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.cas.proxy.RejectProxyTickets"/>

<bean id="serviceProperties" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.cas.ServiceProperties">
    <property name="service" value="http://localhost:8080/roller/roller_j_security_check"/>
    <property name="sendRenew" value="false"/>
</bean>

Download roller-cas.jar and copy it to $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/roller/WEB-INF/lib.
Copy casclient.jar from the cas-client-java-2.1.1/dist directory to $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/roller/WEB-INF/lib.

Child pages

Roller 4.0 with LDAP and CAS

Install Roller and Test

Install LDAP and Test

Install CAS and Test