SemanticScuttle/doc/authentication.txt

External authentication with SemanticScuttle
============================================

Most times, one piece of software is only a part in the big puzzle
that makes the software landscape of a company or organization.
SemanticScuttle is not different and should integrate as nicely as
possible with all other systems.

One of the basic tasks of integration is user authentication against
a central database - be it a central user database, an LDAP or a
active directory server.

Since version 0.96, SemanticScuttle supports user authentication against
external systems. To provide a wide range of supported systems, we chose
to utilize PEAR's Authentication package [1].
It does this by providing different "authentication containers" [2],
for example Database, IMAP, LDAP, POP3, RADIUS, SAP and SOAP.

Please be aware of the fact that, after successful authentication, the user
and his scrambled password are stored in the SemanticScuttle database.
This is required for proper functioning of the software. It does not mean
that you will be able to login if your external authentication provider
is offline - you won't, execpt you switch it off in the SemanticScuttle
configuration.


[1] http://pear.php.net/package/Auth
[2] http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.authentication.auth.intro-storage.php


Basic configuration
===================
The default configuration file data/config.default.php has an own section
on auth options and an explanation of the single entries.

To utilize the external authentication, you need to install the
PEAR Auth package:
 $ pear install auth
If you do not have a PEAR installation available, you can try to manually
install the files in the src/ directory. If you choose to do that, the
src/ directory should look similar to that:

 src/
  Auth.php
  Auth/
   Anonymous.php
   Container.php
   Container/
    ..
  SemanticScuttle/
   header.php
   ..

After that, modify your data/config.php file. The most important change
is to use
 $serviceoverrides['User'] = 'SemanticScuttle_Service_AuthUser';
which tells SemanticScuttle to switch to the special authentication service.

Now that's done, you can configure the single auth options:
 $authType = 'MDB2';
selects the authentication container.

 $authOptions
is an array of options specific to the authentication container. Please
consult the PEAR Auth documentation for more information.

 $authDebug = true;
should be used when setup fails, since it may give important hints
where it fails. Please note that login will seem to fail with
debugging activated. Going back to the main page after that will
show that you are logged in.



Authentication examples
=======================

General database authentification
---------------------------------
Here you also need the PEAR MDB2 package.
The "new_link" option is important!

config.php settings:
-8<------------------
$serviceoverrides['User'] = 'SemanticScuttle_Service_AuthUser';
$authType = 'MDB2';
$authOptions = array(
    'dsn' => array(
        'phptype'  => 'mysql',
        'hostspec' => 'FIXME',
        'username' => 'FIXME',
        'password' => 'FIXME',
        'database' => 'FIXME',
        'new_link' => true,
    ),
    'table'       => 'usersFIXME',
    'usernamecol' => 'usernameFIXME',
    'passwordcol' => 'passwordFIXME',
    'cryptType'   => 'md5',
);
-8<------------------


Mantis Bugtracker
-----------------
Here you also need the PEAR MDB2 package.

config.php settings:
-8<------------------
$serviceoverrides['User'] = 'SemanticScuttle_Service_AuthUser';
$authType = 'MDB2';
$authOptions = array(
    'dsn' => array(
        'phptype'  => 'mysql',
        'hostspec' => 'FIXME',
        'username' => 'FIXME',
        'password' => 'FIXME',
        'database' => 'FIXME',
        'new_link' => true,
    ),
    'table'       => 'mantis_user_table',
    'usernamecol' => 'username',
    'passwordcol' => 'password',
    'cryptType'   => 'md5',
);
-8<------------------


MediaWiki
---------
Unfortunately, the password column does not contain a simple hashed
password - for good reasons as described on
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual_talk:User_table#user_password_column

If you configure your mediawiki to use passwords without salt, you
can make it work nevertheless:

MediaWiki LocalSettings.php:
 $wgPasswordSalt = false;
- after that, users need to change/update their passwords to get them
unsalted in the database. You can verify if the passwords are unhashed
if you do
 SELECT CAST( user_password AS CHAR ) FROM user
on your MediaWiki database. Passwords prefixed with ":A:" can be used.

Another problem is that mediawiki user names begin with an uppercase letter.
You need to modify www/login.php and remove the "utf8_strtolower" function
call:
 $posteduser = trim(utf8_strtolower(POST_USERNAME));
becomes
 $posteduser = trim(POST_USERNAME);


config.php settings:
-8<------------------
$serviceoverrides['User'] = 'SemanticScuttle_Service_AuthUser';
$authType = 'MDB2';
$authOptions = array(
    'dsn' => array(
        'phptype'  => 'mysql',
        'hostspec' => 'FIXME',
        'username' => 'FIXME',
        'password' => 'FIXME',
        'database' => 'FIXME',
        'new_link' => true,
    ),
    'table'       => 'user',
    'usernamecol' => 'user_name',
    'passwordcol' => 'user_password',
    'cryptType'   => 'md5_mediawiki',
);
function md5_mediawiki($password) {
    return ':A:' . md5($password);
}
-8<------------------