See also: LDAP Tracker Field

LDAP Authentication tab

Overview

Tiki can authenticate users using a LDAP (Active Directory) 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.

How to know which LDAP Bind Type you need to use

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
• How to set up LDAP and Active Directory forum post here, thanks jwbrandon

• LDAP
• AD
• Active Directory
• OpenLDAP