LDAP Configuration

Syndeia Cloud offers delegated authentication to industry-standard and commercial LDAP Identity Providers

In LDAP authentication, Syndeia Cloud connects to your organization’s LDAP server for authentication. Only the LDAP username is stored on Syndeia Cloud, and authentication is handled by your LDAP server for Syndeia Cloud.

Preparation Tasks

1. Deploy Syndeia Cloud according to Intercax Documentation.

2. Read as much of https://ldap.com/learn-about-ldap/ as you need to be fluent in LDAP terms and administration.

3. Test your assumptions about your organization’s LDAP IdP with either of curl or ldapsearch - Syndeia uses a third-party library for LDAP queries and if external, simple LDAP queries do not work, your configuration of Syndeia based on incorrect assumptions is not going to be successful.

   1. Read https://devconnected.com/how-to-search-ldap-using-ldapsearch-examples/

Configure the IdP

• Browse to and authenticate into your organization’s choice of IdP’s administration web site (or LDAP Directory desktop utility such as Azure AD or Apache Directory Studio)

  • In Syndeia Silhouette, this is the ldap.hostname and ldap.port setting

• Enter the integrations management portion of this administration web site

• Find or Create a new LDAP service for the IdP’s users

• Browse the IdP’s LDAP “tree” to discover all of the following

  • The administrator credentials necessary to bind to the LDAP query URL to search the entire tree for groups and users

    • the IdP might grant query rights to anonymous users but often a client user or script has to provide administrator credentials to query the IdP (via LDAP) for the existence of other user identities

    • This is the “Bind Distinguished Name” (Bind DN) and its password

      • In Syndeia Silhouette, this is the ldap.adminUserDN and the ldap.adminPassword

  • The topmost node in the LDAP tree where user identities are stored.

    • This is the “Base Distinguished Name” (Base DN)

      • In Syndeia Silhouette, this is the ldap.baseDN

  • The topmost node in the LDAP tree where groups are defined

• If you are setting up an LDAP service for the organization, you will need to configure the LDAP tree before attempting to integrate Syndeia with the LDAP service.

Configure your Organization

With LDAP, all management of user identities and of permissible passwords are all the responsibility and choice of the organization.

• Assure the LDAP IdP has a directory of user identities

• Know which users or groups should be permitted access to the Syndeia Service Provider

Users in the organization will not be able to access Syndeia Cloud through LDAP until the organization grants them, through the administration in the LDAP IdP, an LDAP user identifier that has a password and an email address.

Configure silhouette.conf

• ssh log into the Syndeia Cloud server with a user that can perform “passwordless sudo” operations. Root access is not necessary, if sudo access has been established.

• cd to /opt/icx/syndeia-cloud-current/confs/web-gateway-impl/conf

• copy all of the following into silhouette.conf, adding or replacing any existing ldap. settings.

• Replace all EXAMPLE values – like MYCOMPANY.MYCOM:LDAPPORT– with the values for your organization.

# LDAP provider
ldap.hostname="MYLDAPSERVICE.MYCOMPANY.MYCOM"
# ldap.port=389|636(TLS)|<custom>
ldap.port=LDAPPORT
ldap.baseDN="dc=MYCOMPANY,dc=MYCOM"
ldap.adminUserDN="cn=MYADMIN,ou=MYADMINGROUP,dc=MYCOMPANY,dc=MYCOM"
ldap.adminPassword="MYADMINPASS"
ldap.userBindAttribute="uid"
ldap.mailAttribute="userPrincipalName"

# [optional]:  For SSL/TLS + certificate-based LDAPS
# ldap.startTLS=false|true
ldap.startTLS=false
ldap.truststorePath=""
ldap.truststorePassword=""
ldap.trustStoreType = ""

# ldap.trustAllCertificates=true|false
ldap.trustAllCertificates=true

# --------------------------------------------------
# If you want to limit Syndeia access to the members of
# a single LDAP group, then supply appropriate values for each and every one of
# the group settings below in addition to the settings for the general LDAP authentication.
# --------------------------------------------------
  #
  # Base DN where Syndeia looks for <memberAttribute> to identify groups and/or users to authenticate for Syndeia Cloud
  # ldap.groupSettings.dn="ou=MYTEAMS,dc=MYCOMPANY,dc=MYCOM"
  #
  # Necessary OU attribute value to help Syndeia identify LDAP group nodes
  # Syndeia will search through nested groups of any depth but all must be within the base DN above specified in ldap.groupSettings.dn)
  # ldap.groupSettings.ou="groups"
  #
  # Simple name of the group used to restrict access to Syndeia Cloud
  # ldap.groupSettings.name="MYSYNDEIAUSERGROUP"
  #
  # Attribute used to indicate group instances
  #   for example, given a DN: "cn=MYSYNDEIAUSERGROUP,ou=MYTEAMS,dc=MYCOMPANY,dc=MYCOM", then use "cn" next
  # ldap.groupSettings.bindAttribute="cn"
  #
  # Attribute used in group instances to indicate members of that group
  # ldap.groupSettings.memberAttribute="uniqueMember"
  

Curious about the purpose of each and every setting? Expand this:

Operation

1. Restart the web-gateway service

   1. sudo systemctl restart sc-web-gateway

At this point, if a user authenticates via LDAP with the Syndeia client, it should automatically create an account with default user read-level permissions, ie: you can open a project and read information but not create new connections, repositories, or projects.
When a user requires more permissions, use the User Management feature in the Web Admin Portal to change this.