In order to make your application use MIT Touchstone, or Shibboleth, for authentication, several steps have to be performed. MIT Information Services offers consulting services to make this process easier. However, many people at MIT are able to perform each of these simple steps with minimal intervention from IS&T.

The information below is intended to help guide you through your configuration.

Shibboleth SP version information

IS&T currently supports new customers intending to use Shibboleth 2.x. We recommend that new installations use Shibboleth 2.x based SPs.

As of June 30, 2010, the Internet2 Shibboleth development team no longer promises to supply security updates for version 1.3x. The 1.3x version is now considered end of life.

We strongly recommend that any sites still running Shibboleth 1.3 in production plan to upgrade to the current version of Shibboleth as soon as possible. This will protect against the possibility of a forced but unplanned migration from 1.3 should a security issue or incompatibility be discovered.

Information about migrating an existing Shibboleth SP 1.3x installation to version 2.x can be found at
https://wikis.mit.edu/confluence/display/TOUCHSTONE/Migrating+a+Shibboleth+1.3+SP+to+2.x

Using installers:

The most current installers from Internet2 can always be found at http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/downloads.html

The link provided above should be used if you are installing a 2.x Service Provider (SP). It is not necessary to download the -debuginfo, -devel, or -docs RPMs.

Some other Linux distributions also maintain binary installers available from the OS distribution point. If you have questions about other distributions please contact touchstone-support and indicate what operating distribution and version you are using.

Building from source:

The Touchstone team strongly recommends that you use the installers available from Internet2 or your operating system vendor.

However, if you need to build from source, please read the following pages:

Once you have built the software successfully, you will need to configure and customize it for use.

Certificate request and configuration

Before proceeding to "Configuration and customization for use" you should obtain a server certificate.

Please make sure that you use lower case servernames in your certificate request. The server name within the certifiacte is case sensitive.

Information about how to generate a certificate request and where to send the request can be found in https://wikis.mit.edu/confluence/display/WSWG/How+to+acquire+and+verify+a+M.I.T.+x509+Server+Certificate

Historical note:

If your server already has a server certificate issued by the MIT Certificate Authority, and it was issued after July 1st, 2008, and it has not expired, you should be able to use it with Shibboleth/MIT Touchstone. If the server certificate was issued prior to July 1st, 2008, you probably need to obtain a new server certificate.

Configure the SP software

On a Linux server, the quickest way to get started is to copy the following files from the Touchstone locker (/mit/touchstone/config/shibboleth2-sp) into /etc/shibboleth:

  • attribute-map.xml
  • gen-shib2.sh
  • shibboleth2.xml.in

Note: If you do not have AFS installed on your server, then you can access the above files via http, either from a browser or using wget. The URL is http://web.mit.edu/touchstone/config/shibboleth2-sp/

Then run the gen-shib2.sh script, and answer the prompts, to generate shibboleth2.xml. For example:

# cd /etc/shibboleth
# cp /mit/touchstone/config/shibboleth2-sp/* .
# sh gen-shib2.sh

Note that any changes to the shibboleth2.xml, attribute-map.xml, and attribute-policy.xml files will be detected automatically, i.e. without requiring a restart of shibd.

Note: The gen-shib2.sh procedure described above currently works only on Linux and Solaris systems; it should be portable to other UNIX-based systems without too much effort. Please contact touchstone-support if you are using another operating system and having problems with the gen-shib2.sh script.

The $prefix/etc/shibboleth directory will contain apache.config, apache2.config, and apache22.config, which contain needed and example directives for Apache 1.3, Apache 2.0, and Apache 2.2, respectively; copy and/or include the appropriate file in your Apache config, and customize as needed.

The directory also contains a shibd init script for Red Hat (shibd-redhat) and Debian (shibd-debian) systems. The current Red Hat RPMs also install the init script into /etc/init.d/shibd, and adds it as a managed service.

On Solaris machines, the gen-shib.sh script will generate a shibd init script (from shibd.in); this should be installed into /etc/init.d, and configured to start at boot time, after httpd has started.

NOTE: shibd is a daemon that must be running, so make sure it is started at boot time, after Apache httpd has been started.

On Windows/IIS machines, the shibboleth2.xml.windows-example file in the locker is a good starting point for the shibboleth2.xml file. You will need to edit the file for it to work on your server; please see the comments at the top of the file for the details. The attribute-map.xml file in the locker should work without modification.

Configuring and customizing the Shibboleth 1.3x SP

Log Files

The Shibboleth Apache module logs by default to $prefix/var/log/httpd/native.log.

This file must be writable by Apache, which may require that you set its directory's ownership and/or permissions to allow write access by the user Apache is configured to run under. You may also choose to change the location of the file (for example to /var/log/shibboleth/httpd/native.log), by modifying the log4j.appender.native_log.fileName setting in $prefix/etc/shibboleth/native.logger, and appropriately creating the containing directory.

The Shibboleth daemon logs to shibd.log and transaction.log in $prefix/var/log/shibboleth/.

Protecting Content

For information on configuring Shibboleth to protect content, see the Shibboleth wiki at Internet2, as well as the information in the sections below.

Customize the error pages

This is optional, but recommended.

You will probably also want to customize the error pages and support contact information listed in the <Errors> element in $prefix/etc/shibboleth/shibboleth.xml, e.g.:

<Errors supportContact="root@localhost"
    logoLocation="/shibboleth-sp/logo.jpg"
    styleSheet="/shibboleth-sp/main.css"/>

The error template files are located in $prefix/etc/shibboleth/ (you can override these locations in the <Errors> element). For more information, see https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/SHIB2/NativeSPErrors

Letting the IdP know about your application

Until the MIT Identity Providers know about your application, they won't release information about an authenticated user to your server. Each Touchstone enabled application running on a server needs to be registered with the IdPs.

To register your application server with the MIT IdPs send mail to touchstone-support with the following information:

  • A contact email address. We strongly recommend that this be an email list rather than an individual's personal email address.
  • The server or host name. This should be the web server host name, i.e. the host name that a user would specify when entering the URL to access your site. This should be the same as the CN in your server's SSL certificate. If you have multiple applications installed on the same server, you will actually need to register each application's provider ID. See below for more details.
  • Organization name. This is typically the name of the MIT department, lab, or center running the application.
  • Organization URL. The URL that provides some basic information about your department, lab, or center.

We also encourage you to send the following optional information with your registration information:

  • The application URL. The actual URL which will be used to access your application.
  • Your server platform. (RHEL 4, RHEL 5, Windows, Debian, Solaris, ...)

The IdP doesn't really need to know your hostname. It does need to know the Provider ID that uniquely identifies your application. Typical MIT installations that use the gen-shib.sh script (see above) hide this detail from you so that we simply need the hostname. If you want to learn more about provder ID naming please see EntityNamingat the Internet2 wiki site.

A single Shibboleth SP installation is designed to support multiple applications installed on that server, but there are different deployment and configuration strategies to support multiple applications. At MIT we recommend that each application be configured to use a separate Apache vhost, in addtion to simply creating additional ProviderIDs for each application. More information is available here:

Keep your metadata up to date

You should ensure that your SP's copy of the MIT metadata is kept up to date. The current metadata is available in http://web.mit.edu/touchstone/shibboleth/config/metadata/MIT-metadata.xml.

The easiest way to maintain the metadata is by configuring a <MetadataProvider> element in shibboleth2.xml which points at this URL. (This will be set up for you automatically if you use the gen-shib2 procedure with the shibboleth2.xml.in template, as discussed above). The Shibboleth 2.x SP software will automatically refresh the metadata periodically.

If you are running Shibboleth 1.3, or prefer not to have Shibboleth refresh the metadata automatically for some reason, then you must use a cron job (or other regularly scheduled procedure) which runs a script to download and install the latest metadata. A sample of such a script is available in http://web.mit.edu/touchstone/shibboleth/config/metadata/update-metadata.sh-example. Adjust it as necessary for your installation; in particular, if you did not install from the stock RPMs from Internet2, you will need to adjust the setting for the Shibboleth etc directory at the top of the script.

The Shibboleth SP software detects and loads the updated metadata automatically; there is no need to restart the web server or shibd.

Example code and configuration information for third party applications

We have some pointers to example code written in various lanaguages. We do expect the examples to increase over time. We are also creating some local documentation that covers the configuration of third party software. However, users are encouraged to look at resources outside of MIT as well. If you do find useful information please do bring it to our attention.

Some simple examples:

  • Display the results of the SAML assertion in various languages.

Third party applications:

Support Resources

Consulting service may be arranged by sending mail to touchstone-support. This will open an RT case and a person will be assigned to work with you.

Classes held during IAP of 2009 were poorly attended. No training classes are scheduled at this time. If you are interested, please send mail to touchstone-support. If there is sufficient interest a class will be scheduled and you will be informed.

Who to Contact:

Web: MIT Touchstone
Email: touchstone-support@mit.edu