LDAP Authentication tab

Overview

Tiki can authenticate users using a LDAP server

To Access

From the Login Admin page, click the LDAP tab.

• Note that the PHP ldap module must be installed for LDAP authentication to work. See PHP LDAP Module for more information.

LDAP tab

Setting	Description	Default
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 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 this writing, this is not yet implemented, and this option will probably not be 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".	Enabled
Use Tiki authentication for users created in Tiki	If this option is set, users that are created using Tiki are not authenticated via LDAP. This can be useful to let external users (ex.: partners or consultants) access Tiki, without being in your main user list in LDAP.
LDAP Bind
Host:	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.example.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 (Admin -> Tiki Logs, Tiki Logs have to be enable). Note: Do not enable this option for production sites.
Use SSL (ldaps)
Use TLS
LDAP Bind Type:		Default Anonymous Bind
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	Subtree
LDAP version:		3
Base DN:
		LDAP User
User DN:
User attribute:		uid
User OC (Object Class):		inetOrgPerson
Realname attribute:		displayName
Country attribute:
E-mail attribute:
		LDAP Group
Group DN:
Group attribute:		cn
Group description attribute		:
Group OC (Object Class):		groupOfUniqueNames
LDAP Group Member	if group membership can be found in group attributes
Member attribute:		uniqueMember
Member is DN		Enabled
LDAP User Group	if group membership can be found in user attributes
Group attribute:
Group attribute in group entry:	(Leave this empty if the group name is already given in the user attribute)
LDAP Admin
Admin user:
Admin password:

LDAP tab

Setting	Description	Default
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 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 this writing, this is not yet implemented, and this option will probably not be 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".	Enabled
Use Tiki authentication for users created in Tiki	If this option is set, users that are created using Tiki are not authenticated via LDAP. This can be useful to let external users (ex.: partners or consultants) access Tiki, without being in your main user list in LDAP.
LDAP Bind
Host:	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.example.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 (Admin -> Tiki Logs, Tiki Logs have to be enable). Note: Do not enable this option for production sites.
Use SSL (ldaps)
Use TLS
LDAP Bind Type:		Default Anonymous Bind
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	Subtree
LDAP version:		3
Base DN:
		LDAP User
User DN:
User attribute:		uid
User OC (Object Class):		inetOrgPerson
Realname attribute:		displayName
Country attribute:
E-mail attribute:
		LDAP Group
Group DN:
Group attribute:		cn
Group description attribute		:
Group OC (Object Class):		groupOfUniqueNames
LDAP Group Member	if group membership can be found in group attributes
Member attribute:		uniqueMember
Member is DN		Enabled
LDAP User Group	if group membership can be found in user attributes
Group attribute:
Group attribute in group entry:	(Leave this empty if the group name is already given in the user attribute)
LDAP Admin
Admin user:
Admin password:

LDAP Authentication starting from Tiki 4

Changes

The LDAP Authentication part has been rewritten in Tiki4. 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 front-end
• 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.

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. This can be useful to let external users (ex.: partners or consultants) access Tiki, without being in your main user list in 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.example.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)	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 (Object Class)	Objectclass used to create groups. Example groupOfUniqueNames would result in a group search using the filter (objectclass=groupOfUniqueNames)
Member Attribute	Attribute used to retrieve 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.

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)	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 (Object Class)	Objectclass used to create groups. Example groupOfUniqueNames would result in a group search usinf the filter (objectclass=groupOfUniqueNames)
LDAP Member Attribute	Attribute used to retrieve 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 Tiki prior to 1.9.8 to use LDAP.

How to know which LDAP Bind Type you need to use

• Active Directory bind method will build a RDN like username at example.com where your basedn is (dc=example, 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=example,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 chosen the wrong bind method (it can be an active directory method)
• Use want to use the search scope subtree at the beginning, then once it is working, switch to a specifc OU for better performance

How to get the email and other attributes back in Tiki

Tiki builds another DN to get the attributes. This time, Tiki 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 that contains the mail

Examples

Note: What you use for baseDn and UserDn is completely dependent upon how you or your administrator has configured LDAP. Keep in mind Tiki will search for the user in the LDAP tree beginning at the level specified in BaseDn. So the UserDN and groupDN are not strictly needed.

Unix

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

Active Directory

Note: The default install of Active Directory places user accounts (and groups) in the container "cn=Users, dc=example,dc=com". But, most large organizations reorganize AD to suit their needs. See the note above regarding searches.

UI-Note: after Tiki 6.1 the LDAP configuration UI has changed. Group setup is done under "LDAP External groups" even though the groups does not reside on an external LDAP server.

Also note that Tiki above 6.1 does not support custom characters i.e. the scandinavien letters "æ,ø,å" in CN name. (potentially in other fields too). (this has been marked as a bug).

On Tiki 7.1-7.2 the GUI has changed and now there is the "LDAP" tab and the "LDAP external groups" tab.Click here for LDAP tab and here for LDAP external Groups.This proposed settings worked on 4/10/2011 on windows server 2008 with Active Directory.

Zimbra LDAP

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. Else, your logs will get flooded!

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

<?php
require_once ('tiki-setup.php');
if ( !function_exists( 'ldap_connect' ) ) 
	die('Function ldap_connect does not exist. Is ldap extension enabled in php.ini?');
$con = ldap_connect('ldap://my_hostname:389');
ldap_set_option(NULL, LDAP_OPT_DEBUG_LEVEL, 7);
ldap_set_option($con, LDAP_OPT_PROTOCOL_VERSION, 3);
ldap_set_option($con, LDAP_OPT_REFERRALS, false);
$dn = 'cn=username,dc=example,dc=com';
if(ldap_bind($con, $dn,'verrry_secret')) {
  echo "connect 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 {
  $err = ldap_error($con);
  echo "Oops! ". $err. "<br/>";
  
  /* Uncomment this section to (attempt to) get the extended error
    if (ldap_get_option($con, 0x0032, $extended_error)) {
		echo "Error Binding to LDAP: $extended_error";
	} else {
		echo "Error Binding to LDAP: No additional information is available.";
	}
*/
}
?>

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

Empty pages

When changing auth-type from "tiki" to "tiki + ldap", you might need to clear the tiki-system cache.

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.

Note that using LDAPS on Windows has a similar requirement. PHP seems to look for the file C:\OpenLDAP\sysconf\ldap.conf. If it doesn't exist, manually create it.
In the first line of the file write
TLS_REQCERT never
Restart IIS afterwards.

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 synchronized to Tiki. What is not replicated to Tiki are object (user/group) deletions.

Group membership and permissions

One interesting 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 "Registered", you should give "Registered" 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

LDAP Pear::Auth Troubleshooting

You can verify your connection by editing the file \tiki\lib\pear\Auth\Container\LDAP.php in line 453 for tw6.4 (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 aware that after your troubleshooting you must switch off the debug option to login.

Related links

• Comparison of major LDAP web interfaces in PHP
• ClearOS comes with an automatically configured OpenLDAP server, used for Tiki Suite.
  • suite:Tiki Suite LDAP

• LDAP
• AD
• Active Directory
• OpenLDAP