Installing SP2.x under Linux

These instructions apply to installs either using RPMs provided by Internet2, or using native packages available in Debian/Ubuntu. See NativeSPLinuxInstall in the Internet2 Wiki for instructions on installing in other versions of Linux, and then adapt these instructions accordingly.

Currently these instructions also assume you are using the prefork version Apache - this may or may not all work with worker. We also assume that your web server serves a single site - virtual hosting issues are addressed later.

Installation

RPMs

Currently (January 2011) Internet2 provide RPMs for support CentOS 5, RHEL 4, 5 and 6, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, 10, 11 and 11_SP1, and OpenSUSE Linux 11.1, 11.2 and 11.3, all in i386 and x86_64 versions.

Download and install the appropriate RPMs from OpenSUSE project's Build Service at http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/security://shibboleth/. Download and install the latest RPM for each of the following (you can ignore devel, debuginfo, or docs packages):

log4shib 
xerces-c 
xml-security-c
xmltooling
opensaml 
shibboleth 

and any of their dependencies. The Build Service will act as a Yum repository, allowing various package managers to interact with it directly. Details vary between distributions and package managers, but for SLES10 and zypper the appropriate repository can be added with

zypper sa http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/security:/shibboleth/SLE_10/

after which the Shibboleth software can be installed with

zypper in shibboleth

Further information on configuring package manages can be found here and here.

Debian/Ubuntu

Currently (January 2011) Debian includes a package of version 2.3.1 of the SP software in squeeze (testing) and sid (unstable). lenny (stable) comes with a package of version 2.0 which is unlikely to work with these instructions as they stand, but the lenny-backports distribution includes version 2.3.1.

Ubuntu includes a package of version 2.3.1 in lucid (10.04LTS), maverick (10.10) and natty. karmic (9.10) contained a package of version 2.1 which is unlikely to work with these instructions as they stand. hardy (8.04LTS) only contained a package of the now unsupported version 1.3.

In all cases, the distribution-supplied version of the SP software can be instaleld by installing the libapache2-mod-shib2 package and its dependancies, e.g.:

 apt-get install libapache2-mod-shib2
 

Subsequent configuration

After installing the software, in /etc/shibboleth:

• replace the supplied shibboleth2.xml and attribute-map.xml with Shibboleth2.xml - internal use skeleton and Attribute-map.xml - internal use skeleton respectively.
• find all occurrences of 'FIX-ME' in the new shibboleth2.xml and replace them as directed in the adjacent comments (see Editing XML and EntityIDs for useful background).

Run (as root)

 /usr/sbin/shibd -t

and expect to see "overall configuration is loadable, check console for non-fatal problems". Fix any reported mistakes.

Start shibd (as root) with

 /etc/init.d/shibd start

or restart it if it's already running with

 etc/init.d/shibd restart

[Note: "Starting shibd listener failed to enter listen loop" means that you were not root]. See /var/log/shibboleth/shibd.log for startup messages. The Shibboleth packages will have already set shibd to restart on boot.

(Re-)start Apache. In case of failure see /var/log/apache2/error_log

Access http://<hostname>/secure/. You should be redirected to Raven to authenticate, be asked to accept release of your information, and then see a 404 error page from your server (because you have no content in the requested location). See /var/log/apache2/error_log, /var/log/shibboleth/shibd.log and /var/log/shibboleth/transaction.log for clues if something goes wrong. Feel free to create some content in /srv/www/htdocs/secure/ for a better demonstration.

Assuming this works, visit http://<hostname>/Shibboleth.sso/Session to check that attribute information is being released to your SP. You should see a page containing something like:

 Attributes
 ----------
 affiliation: member@cam.ac.uk;member@eresources.lib.cam.ac.uk
 entitlement: urn:mace:dir:entitlement:common-lib-terms
 eppn: fjc55@cam.ac.uk

You now have a web server running the Shibboleth SP software and protecting the content of http://<hostname>/secure/ by requiring an authenticated Raven login (by anyone). Where you go from here depends on what you want to do. Topics to consider include:

• SP registration
• Using SSL and certificates
• Configuring access control
• Using Apache configuration files
• Virtual hosting issues