Table of contents

• Support forum
• Bug reports and feature requests
• LDAP Authentication up to Tiki 3.X
  • LDAP Pear::Auth General Settings Overview
  • LDAP Pear::Auth Troubleshooting
• LDAP Authentication in Tiki 4.0
  • Changes
  • How it works
    • Group membership and permissions
    • How anonymous binding works
  • Settings
    • How to know which LDAP Bind Type you need to use
    • How to get the email and other attributes back in tikiwiki
  • Examples
    • Unix
    • Active Directory
  • Debugging
  • Common Problems and Workarounds
    • Certificate Problems
• Aliases

Support forum

http://tikiwiki.org/forum17

Bug reports and feature requests

http://dev.tikiwiki.org/LDAP

LDAP Authentication up to Tiki 3.X

LDAP Pear::Auth General Settings Overview

Tiki can authenticate users using a LDAP server via Pear::Auth (see http://pear.php.net/package-info.php?package=Auth) . The following settings only make sense, if you have set "Authentication method" to " Tiki/Pear::Auth " in the above dialog. Tiki then uses the LDAP server in addition to its own user database (users_users) to authenticate users. Your Php must have ldap support on (debian: php4-ldap, php5-ldap, ....)

Create user if not in Tiki?	If a user was authenticated via LDAP, but not found in the Tiki user database, Tiki will create an entry in its user database if this option is checked. If this option is disabled, this user wouldn't be able to log in
Create user if not in Auth?	If a user was authenticated by Tiki's user database, but not found on the LDAP server, Tiki will create an LDAP entry for this user. See Pear::Auth on how an entry is created.
Just use tiki auth for admin?	If this option is set, the user "admin" will be authenticated by only using Tiki's user database and not via LDAP. This option has no effect on users other than "admin".
LDAP Host	The hostname or ip address of you LDAP server (usually localhost).
LDAP Port	The port number your LDAP server uses (389 is the default).
LDAP Scope	Search scope (base = Base object search, one = one-level search, sub = Subtree search (default) ) used during authentication for finding a user on the LDAP server.
LDAP Base DN	Base DN of the LDAP server. If you leave this empty, Pear::Auth will try to query your LDAP server for its base DN. Example: dc=my-company,dc=com
LDAP User DN	RDN to prepend to the base DN when searching for a user. Example: ou=People will search in ou=People,dc=my-company,dc=com
LDAP User attribute	Attribute that contains the username. (Note: for Active Directory try UserAttribute: sAMAccountName)
LDAP User OC	Object class an entry must have when searching for a user. This is mandatory ! If you dont know what to fill in, use * (an asterix)
LDAP Group DN	RDN to prepend to the base DN when searching for a user. Example: ou=Groups will search in ou=Groups,dc=my-company,dc=com
LDAP Group Attribute	Attribute that contains the group name. Example cn
LDAP Group OC	Objectclass used to create groups. Example groupOfUniqueNames would result in a group search usinf the filter (objectclass=groupOfUniqueNames)
LDAP Member Attribute	Attribute used to retreive group members. Example uniqueMember will result in retrieval of all uniqueMembers from a groupOfUniqueNames
LDAP Member Is DN	Defines whether member attribute retrieved using LDAP Member Attribute is full DN (y/n)
LDAP Admin User	DN of the entry to use to bind to the LDAP server for user creation. While authentication works without binding as a privileged DN, creation of an entry usually does not. This admin DN is only used when creating user entries on the LDAP server (i.e. only if the option Create user if not in Auth is checked). Authentication works without an admin DN ( Pear::Auth will try to bind using the username/password to authenticate). Note: When using Active Directory as the LDAP server, you usually have to specify an Admin user/PW. This is due to AD's default restriction that doesn't allow anonymous searches. In this case the user does not need to be an administrative user. A regular user account will suffice.
LDAP Admin Pwd	Password for the above DN.
LDAP Version	Usually 3

The LDAP Group and LDAP Member settings are currently not used by Tiki (as of 1.10 rc).

If your admin page does not contain all the fields listed above, reference LDAPUseInPriorVersions for information on how to modify versions of tikiwiki prior to 1.9.8 to use LDAP.

LDAP Pear::Auth Troubleshooting

You can verify your connection by editing the file \tiki\lib\pear\Auth\Container\LDAP.php in line 441 (for tw < 4)
from

$this->options['debug']       = false;

to

$this->options['debug']       = true;

After the login you see a screen with a successful binding to the AD/LDAP-Server

281: Connecting with host:port
288: Successfully connected to server
292: Switching to LDAP version 3
306: Switching LDAP referrals to true
312: Binding with credentials
325: Binding was successful
548: UTF8 encoding username for LDAPv3
574: Searching with ldap_search and filter (&(sAMAccountName=exampleuser)(objectClass=*)) in ou=europe,dc=xnet,dc=oe,dc=examplehost
581: User was found
636: Bind as CN=exampleuser,OU=users,OU=ode,OU=europe,DC=xnet,DC=oe,DC=examplehost
640: Bind successful
650: Authenticated

Be ware that after your troubleshooting you must switch off the debug option to login.

LDAP Authentication in Tiki 4.0

Changes

The LDAP Authentication part has been rewritten in Tiki 4.0. Tiki no more uses PEARs Auth due to the lack of flexibility and missing features - PEARs Auth is not intended to be able to fetch any other LDAP entries than the user entry. Now it uses PEAR LDAP2.

List of changes:

• The words "PEAR Auth" and "Auth" have been replaced by "LDAP" in code and web frontend
• A proxy user (ldap admin) is no more needed to authenticate
• You can add more redundant LDAP servers in your configuration
• The use of ssl or tls is supported now (needs some more testing)
• You can specify the type of LDAP Server (Active Directory, Openldap, ...)
• User and Group information can be replicated to tiki on every user login. Therefore you can reuse data already present in your LDAP directory
• Users replicated from LDAP have now disabled tiki passwords to avoid having ghost users in tiki that are deleted in LDAP

How it works

If a user enters his username and password in tiki, a binddn is created and together with the password used to authenticate the user at the ldap server. Once authenticated the user is allowed to read data from the ldap server. Especially he usually can read his own data and the ldap group information. These data are used to create the user and group in tiki. The user has the tiki password disabled. He only can login via LDAP. On subsequent logins, the data are synchronized from LDAP to tiki (not the other direction!).
The replicated data can be at the moment:

• Users full name
• Users email address
• Users country information
• Users group membership
• Group name and description

So if you change any of the above information in LDAP, the data are synchronized the next time the user logs into tiki. You can even change group membership in LDAP and it gets sychronized to tiki. What is not replicated to tiki are object (usr/group) deletions.

Group membership and permissions

One useful use of LDAP with groups is to give users from specific groups more permissions. Since every user created in tiki is assigned to the build in group "Registred", you should give "Registred" the same permissions like "Anonymous". You may want to give some LDAP usergroups special permissions. Let one user of that group login to tiki to automatically create the group. Then assign permissions to that group.

How anonymous binding works

- connect anonymously to the LDAP server
- get the user DN
- authenticate the user by binding with the server as DN + password

Settings

Create user if not in Tiki?	If a user was authenticated via LDAP, but not found in the Tiki user database, Tiki will create an entry in its user database if this option is checked. If this option is disabled, this user wouldn't be able to log in
Create user if not in LDAP?	If a user was authenticated by Tiki's user database, but not found on the LDAP server, Tiki will create an LDAP entry for this user. As of time of writing, this is not yet implemented, and this option will probably no more offered in future.
Use Tiki authentication for Admin login	If this option is set, the user "admin" will be authenticated by only using Tiki's user database and not via LDAP. This option has no effect on users other than "admin".
Use Tiki authentication for users created in tiki	If this option is set, users that are created using Tiki are not authenticated via LDAP
Hosts	The hostnames, ip addresses or URIs of your LDAP servers. Separate multiple entries with Whitespace or ','. If you use URIs, then the settings for Port number and SSL are ignored. Example: "localhost ldaps://master.ldap.mydomain.org:63636" will try to connect to localhost unencrypted and if if fails it will try the master ldap server at a special port with ssl.
Port	The port number your LDAP server uses (389 is the default, 636 if you check ssl).
Write LDAP debug Information in Tiki Logs	Write debug information to tiki logs. For production sites uncheck this!
LDAP Bind Type	Here you can control how your bind DN is constructed.
Search Scope	Search scope (base = Base object search, one = one-level search, sub = Subtree search (default) ) used after authentication for getting user and group information
LDAP Version	Usually 3
Base DN	Base DN of the LDAP server. Gets appended to bind DN, user DN and group DN. Example: dc=my-company,dc=com
User DN	RDN to prepend to the base DN when searching for a user. Example: ou=People will search in ou=People,dc=my-company,dc=com
User attribute	Attribute that contains the username. (Note: for Active Directory try UserAttribute: sAMAccountName)
User OC	Object class an entry must have when searching for a user. This is mandatory ! If you dont know what to fill in, use * (an asterix)
Realname attribute	Attribute that holds the real name of the user.
Country attribute	Attribute that holds the country information of the user.
E-mail attribute	Attribute that holds the email of the user.
Group DN	RDN to prepend to the base DN when searching for a user. Example: ou=Groups will search in ou=Groups,dc=my-company,dc=com
Group Attribute	Attribute that contains the group name. Example cn
Group Description Attribute	Attribute that contains the group description
Group OC	Objectclass used to create groups. Example groupOfUniqueNames would result in a group search using the filter (objectclass=groupOfUniqueNames)
Member Attribute	Attribute used to retreive group members. Example uniqueMember will result in retrieval of all uniqueMembers from a groupOfUniqueNames
Member Is DN	Defines whether member attribute retrieved using LDAP Member Attribute is full DN (y/n)
Group attribute in user entry	If the members of a group cannot be found in the group entry, then use this attribute in the users entry to get group information. Example: gidNumber
Group attribute in group entry	Usually empty. Used to search the group entries. Usually the same like the line above - and then you can leave the field empty.
LDAP Admin User	DN of the entry to use to bind to the LDAP server for user creation. While authentication works without binding as a privileged DN, creation of an entry usually does not. This admin DN is only used when creating user entries on the LDAP server (i.e. only if the option Create user if not in Auth is checked). Authentication works without an admin DN.
LDAP Admin Pwd	Password for the above DN.

How to know which LDAP Bind Type you need to use

- Active Directory bind method will build a RDN like where your basedn is (dc=domain, dc=com) and username is your username
- Plain bind method will build a RDN username
- Full bind method will build a RDN like userattr=username, userdn, basedn where userattr is replaced with the value you put in 'User attribute', userdn with the value you put in 'User DN', basedn with the value with the value you put in 'base DN'
- Openldap bind method will build a RDN like cn=username, basedn
- anonymous bind method will build an empty RDN

If you do not know, the best is to use a tool to access the directory like Apache Directory Studio
If you can enter your directory with your email, it is probably an Active Directory
If you can access with your username, it can be plain, full, or openldap
After with your tool navigate to select a user, the DN of the user will be shown and you will be able to guess the method

Some tips:
- You can not build a RDN/DN like this "sAMAccountName=username,dc=domain,dc=com". If you would like to do so because the CN is the real name and not the username, it is probably because you have choosen the wrong bind method (it can be an active directory method)
- Use always he search scope subtree at the beginning - as soon as you are sure of your parameters use antoher method for performance

How to get the email and other attributes back in tikiwiki

Tiwiki builds another DN to get the attributes. This time, tikiwiki uses a search and not a bind. The DN is userattr=username, userdn, basedn where userattr is the attribute you put in 'User Attribute', username is the username, userdn the value you put in 'User DN' and basedn is the value you put in basedn. This time you can use sAMAccountName in the attribute (it is a search not a bind).
Then put the attribute name you see in the DN taht contains the mail

Examples

Unix

These settings should work on most Unix systems that use LDAP for authentication and as information store:

LDAP Bind Type	Default
Base DN	dc=yourdomain,dc=tld
User DN	ou=users
User attribute	uid
User OC	inetOrgPerson
Realname attribute	cn
E-Mail attribute	mail
Group DN	ou=usergroups
Group attribute	cn
Group OC	groupOfNames
Member attribute	member
Member is DN	yes

Active Directory

LDAP Bind Type	Active Directory
Base DN	dc=yourdomain,dc=tld
User DN	cn=users
User attribute	sAMAccountName
User OC	user
Realname attribute	displayName
E-Mail attribute	probably userPrincipalName - not sure if you use exchange
Group DN
Group attribute	cn
Group OC	group
Member attribute	member
Member is DN	yes

Debugging

Check the box at "Write LDAP debug Information in Tiki Logs:" and try to authenticate in another browser. Check Tiki Logs (tiki-syslog.php) to see what went wrong.

ATTENTION: Uncheck the debug settings once you managed to set up your connection. Your logs will get flooded else!

If this even does not help, you can use this code to check whats wrong:

<?php
$con = ldap_connect('ldap://my_hostname:389');
ldap_set_option(NULL, LDAP_OPT_DEBUG_LEVEL, 7);
ldap_set_option($con, LDAP_OPT_PROTOCOL_VERSION, 3);
ldap_set_option($con, LDAP_OPT_REFERRALS, false);
$dn = 'cn=username,dc=domain,dc=tld';
if(ldap_bind($con, $dn,'verrry_secret'))) {
  echo "connec succeeded";
  //and if you want to test the mail
  $filter = '(objectClass=*)';
  $just = array('mail'); // adapt the attribute name
  $sr = ldap_search($con, $dn, $filter, $just);
  $info = ldap_get_entries($con, $sr);
  print_r($info);
} else {
  echo "Oops!";
}
?>

Replace Hostname, Port, binddn and password and run it with
php connect.php

Present the output your LDAP Administrator.

Useful tool: Apache Directory studio

Common Problems and Workarounds

Certificate Problems

If you use certificates on LDAP server side where the root certificate is not trusted, you should put the root or CA certificate somewhere at your tiki webserver and let /etc/openldap/ldap.conf know where it is. Use parameters TLS_CACERTDIR and TLS_CACERT to point it to the root or CA certificate.

If you use self signed certificates you can also simply disable certificate checking by setting TLS_REQCERT to "never" in /etc/openldap/ldap.conf.

See the manpage of "ldap.conf" to get more information.

Aliases

• LDAP
• AD
• Active Directory

---

if ((@ldap_bind($this->conn_id)) == false) {

if ((@ldap_bind($this->conn_id,"user@domain.tld","password")) == false) {