Configuration

Access the settings.xml file in your distribution under the config folder.

1. Add the following element (if not present):

<authentication>
  <type>None</type>
</authentication>

2. Change the authentication type based on your needs. Currently, there are three options:

1. None
   • No security is used. Access to the administration pages is unrestricted.
2. ConfigFile
   • Access to the administration pages is restricted. A single default administrator user ("admin") is able to access the administration pages after successfully entering a password that is configured in the top level application properties (inside the properties section) of the setting file.
3. Ldap
   • Access to the administration pages is restricted. Aspire is configured to connect to an LDAP or Active Directory (AD) server. Users can access the administration pages after being successfully validated by the LDAP/AD server. Access to the administration pages can be further restricted to only users that are members of a specific LDAP/AD group.

Set the password when using ConfigFile authentication

When using ConfigFile authentication, you must set the password that the admin user will be validated against. The password to match is set in the system properties in the settings file in the adminPassword property. An example is shown below:

<!-- System properties -->
<properties>
  <property name="adminPassword">searchtech</property>
</properties>

For security reasons, it is recommended that you encrypt the password when setting the property. See Password Encryption for details on how to encrypt the password.

Configuration for LDAP authentication

When LDAP authentication is selected, you must extend the authentication section to provide the LDAP server to authenticate with. By default, group based access is disabled, meaning that any user who is able to authenticate with the given LDAP server will be able to access the Aspire administration pages. To turn group based access on, you must further extend your configuration, adding the distinguished name (dn) of the group that controls access, an ldap query that will allow Aspire to establish the distinguished name (dn) of the user attempting log on from the user name they provided, the name of the attribute that holds the user to group membership information and an indicator as to whether that information is held in the user object or in the group object.

LDAP configuration parameters

The following parameters may be used when configuring LDAP authentication:

^* Mandatory

Group based access control

When group based access control is disabled, a simple validation of the credentials supplied by the user is all that is required to allow access to the Admin UI. Adding the dn of a group in to the configuration will enable group based access control and, following a successful validation of credentials, the ldap server is queried to see if the user belongs to the desired group. Two slightly different approaches are used depending on the setting of the groupsHoldMembers flag.

By default, groupsHoldMembers is disabled. In this configuration, Aspire queries the ldap server to get the user object using the query specified in the userDNQuery parameter. Once the user object has been found, the membership attribute (configured by the memberAttr parameter) is extracted and the values of this attribute are checked. If one is equal to the adminGroupDN from the configuration, the user belongs to the group and is granted access. Otherwise access is denied.

When groupsHoldMembers is enabled, Aspire again searches ldap for the user object. It then gets the membership attribute (configured by the memberAttr) parameter from the group (using the dn configured in the adminGroupDN parameter) and looks for the dn of the user object. If found, the user belongs to the group and access is granted.

The user dn query

When a user logs in to the user interface, they are first validated against ldap server using the username and password they supplied. If group based access control is disabled, no further checks are performed and the user is granted access (assuming their username and password are valid). If group based access control is enabled, following a successful validation by the ldap server, Aspire then needs to establish the distinguished name of the user who logged on in order to work out if the user is in the appropriate group.

The dn of the user is found by performing a query in ldap for the user, based on the user name used to login. The query entered in the configuration may contain ‘parameters’ that are then substituted. The following parameters are available:

Parameters are entered in the query by enclosing them in curly braces {}. For example, (&(objectClass=person)(sAMAccountName={username})) would become (&(objectClass=person)(sAMAccountName=Administrator)), if the user logged in with either domain\Administrator or Administrator.

Example configuration for LDAP access control

Below is an example of a configuration allowing any valid LDAP user to log in to the Aspire interface.

<authentication>
  <type>Ldap</type>
  <ldap>
    <server>ldap://myLdapServer:389</server>
    <authentication>simple</authentication>
  </ldap>
</authentication>

Example configuration for LDAP group access control

Below is an example of a configuration allowing any validated LDAP user who is a member of the group with the distinguished nane CN=Administrators, CN=Builtin, DC=qa, DC=local to log in to the Aspire interface. In this configuration, the membership information is taken from user objects (the default action) and the memberOf attribute values are checked against the adminGroupDN value and if it is found, the user is granted access.

<authentication>
  <type>Ldap</type>
  <ldap>
    <server>ldap://myLdapServer:389</server>
    <authentication>simple</authentication>
    <searchBase>dc=qa, dc=local</searchBase>
    <userDNQuery><![CDATA[(&(objectClass=person)(sAMAccountName={username}))]]></userDNQuery>
    <adminGroupDN>CN=Administrators, CN=Builtin, DC=qa, DC=local</adminGroupDN>
  </ldap>
</authentication>

Below is an example of a configuration allowing any valid LDAP user who is a member of the group with dn CN=Administrators, CN=Builtin, DC=qa, DC=local to log in to the Aspire interface. In this configuration, the membership information is taken from group object (due to the groupsHoldMembers flag) and the member attribute values from the group are checked against the dn of the user and if it is found, the user is granted access.

<authentication>
  <type>Ldap</type>
  <ldap>
    <server>ldap://myLdapServer:389</server>
    <authentication>simple</authentication>
    <searchBase>dc=qa, dc=local</searchBase>
    <userDNQuery><![CDATA[(&(objectClass=person)(sAMAccountName={username}))]]></userDNQuery>
    <adminGroupDN>CN=Administrators, CN=Builtin, DC=qa, DC=local</adminGroupDN>
    <groupsHoldMembers>true</groupsHoldMembers>
    <memberAttr>member</memberAttr>
  </ldap>
</authentication>