LDAP security

To use Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) for user security, you must switch from the default Pentaho security to LDAP, then you must configure LDAP.

Switch to LDAP

To connect to your LDAP server, you must import the certificate into the JRE's truststore/keystore used by the Pentaho Server (java/lib/security/cacerts).

From the User Console Home menu, click Administration, then select Authentication from the left.
The Authentication interface appears. Local - Use basic Pentaho Authentication is selected by default.
Select the External - Use LDAP / Active Directory server option.
User console authentication set to external
The LDAP Server Connection fields populate with a default URL, user name, and password.
Change the Server URL, User Name, and Password as needed.
Click Test Server Connection to verify the connection to your LDAP server and to complete the set up.
Click the node to select the Pentaho System Administrator user and role to match your LDAP configuration, then click OK.
Note: The Admin user is required for all system-related operations, including the creation of user folders. The Administrator Role is required for mapping a third-party admin role to the Pentaho admin role (Administrator).
Select your LDAP Provider from the drop-down menu.
Configure the LDAP connection as explained in LDAP properties.
Stop the Pentaho Server.
See the Install Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics document for instructions on starting and stopping the Pentaho Server.
Delete the server/pentaho-server/pentaho-solutions/system/karaf/caches folder.
Restart the Pentaho Server and test the LDAP functionality.
See the Install Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics document for instructions on starting and stopping the Pentaho Server.

The Pentaho Server is now configured to authenticate users against your LDAP directory server.

Manual configuration

You must have a working LDAP server with an established configuration before continuing. Follow the instructions below to manually switch from Pentaho default security to LDAP security.

Stop the Pentaho Server.
Edit the security.properties file located in the server/pentaho-server/pentaho-solutions/system folder.
1. Change provider=jackrabbit to provider=ldap
2. Save and close the file.

Edit the server/pentaho-server/pentaho-solutions/system/applicationContext-security-ldap.properties file.

Modify the settings to match your LDAP configuration.


userSearch.searchBase=OU\=YourDomainCustomerCareUsers,DC\=YourDomainCustomerCare,DC\=com
allAuthoritiesSearch.roleAttribute=cn
allAuthoritiesSearch.searchBase=OU\=YourDomainCustomerCareGroups,DC\=YourDomainCustomerCare,DC\=com
userSearch.searchFilter=(sAMAccountName\={0})
allUsernamesSearch.searchFilter=objectClass\=Person
allAuthoritiesSearch.searchFilter= (objectClass\=group)
providerType=ldapCustomConfiguration
[email protected]
populator.rolePrefix=
allUsernamesSearch.searchBase=OU\=YourDomainCustomerCareUsers,DC\=YourDomainCustomerCare,DC\=com
adminUser=CN\=YourAdminUserDN,OU\=OrlandoFL,OU\=NAMER,OU\=Support,OU\=YourDomainCustomerCareUsers,DC\=YourDomainCustomerCare,DC\=com
adminRole=CN\=YourAdminRole,OU\=YourDomainCustomerCareGroups,DC\=YourDomainCustomerCare,DC\=com
populator.groupSearchBase=OU\=YourDomainCustomerCareGroups,DC\=YourDomainCustomerCare,DC\=com
populator.convertToUpperCase=false
populator.searchSubtree=false
allUsernamesSearch.usernameAttribute=sAMAccountName
populator.groupRoleAttribute=cn
contextSource.providerUrl=ldap\://10.100.7.17\:389
contextSource.password=********
populator.groupSearchFilter=(member\={0})

Save and close the file.

Edit the server/pentaho-server/pentaho-solutions/system/repository.spring.properties file.
1. Replace admin in the following line: singleTenanatAdminUserName=admin with the value of the adminUser’ssAMAccountName as defined in the applicationContext-security-ldap.properties file.
2. Save and close the file.
Delete the following directory: server/pentaho-server/pentaho-solutions/system/jackrabbit/repository
CAUTION:
Do not delete the repository.xml file, which is also located in the following directory: server/pentaho-server/pentaho-solutions/system/jackrabbit
Delete the server/pentaho-server/pentaho-solutions/system/karaf/caches folder.
Restart the Pentaho Server and test the LDAP functionality.

The Pentaho Server is now configured to authenticate users against your directory server. The LDAP properties reference article contains supplemental information for LDAP values.

Configure LDAP security caching

If you are using Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) security for your Pentaho environment, the Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics products actively communicate with your LDAP server. Configuring Pentaho to cache access to your LDAP server could improve access speed for this active communication.

To configure Pentaho to cache LDAP security communication, you must update Pentaho spring security to initialize caching, associate the spring security caching with LDAP, then configure the properties of the cache. Perform the following steps to configure Pentaho for LDAP security caching.

Open the pentaho-server/pentaho-solutions/system/applicationContext-spring-security-ldap.xml file with a text editor.

Change authenticator to cachingAuthenticator and populator to cachingPopulator in the ldapAuthenticationProvider bean entry to initialize caching, as shown in the following example:

<bean id="ldapAuthenticationProvider" class="org.pentaho.platform.plugin.services.security.userrole.ldap.DefaultLdapAuthenticationProvider">
  <constructor-arg>
    <ref bean="cachingAuthenticator" />
  </constructor-arg>
  <constructor-arg>
    <ref bean="cachingPopulator" />
  </constructor-arg>
  <constructor-arg>
    <ref bean="ldapRoleMapper" />
  </constructor-arg>
</bean>

Verify the following constructor entries are commented out in the applicationContext-spring-security-ldap.xml file:

<bean id="cachingAuthenticator" class="org.pentaho.platform.plugin.services.security.userrole.ldap.PentahoCachingLdapAuthenticator">
	<constructor-arg ref="authenticator" />
	<property name="cacheRegionName" value="ldapAuthenticatorCache" />
	<property name="passwordHashMethod" value="SHA-256" />
</bean>

<bean id="cachingPopulator" class="org.pentaho.platform.plugin.services.security.userrole.ldap.PentahoCachingLdapAuthoritiesPopulator">
	<constructor-arg ref="populator" />
	<property name="cacheRegionName" value="ldapPopulatorCache" />
</bean>

Uncomment the constructor entries or add them if they do not appear in the applicationContext-spring-security-ldap.xml file to associate the spring security caching with LDAP.
Save and close the applicationContext-spring-security-ldap.xml file.
Open the pentaho-server/tomcat/webapp/WEB-INF/classes/ehcache.xml file with a text editor.

Verify the following cache entries are commented out in the pentaho-server/tomcat/webapp/WEB-INF/classes/ehcache.xml file:

<cache 
name="ldapPopulatorCache" 
maxEntriesLocalHeap="2000" 
eternal="false" 
overflowToDisk="false" 
timeToIdleSeconds="300" 
timeToLiveSeconds="600" 
diskPersistent="false"/>

<cache 
name="ldapAuthenticatorCache" 
maxEntriesLocalHeap="2000" 
eternal="false" 
overflowToDisk="false" 
timeToIdleSeconds="300" 
timeToLiveSeconds="600" 
diskPersistent="false"/>

Uncomment the cache entries or add them if they do not appear in the pentaho-server/tomcat/webapp/WEB-INF/classes/ehcache.xml file to configure the properties of the cache.
Save and close the applicationContext-spring-security-ldap.xml file.

Your LDAP server connection to Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is now cached.

Use nested roles

It is possible to nest user roles such that one role includes all of the users of another role. Doing this external to the core LDAP structure prevents recursive directory queries to find all parents of a given child role. Follow the directions below to modify the Pentaho Server to support nested roles for LDAP and MSAD authentication types.

Stop the Pentaho Server or service.

sh /usr/local/pentaho/server/pentaho-server/stop-pentaho.sh

Open the /pentaho/server/pentaho-server/pentaho-solutions/system/applicationContext-spring-security-ldap.xml file with a text editor.

In the populator bean definition, replace DefaultLdapAuthoritiesPopulator with: NestedLdapAuthoritiesPopulator

<bean id="populator" class="org.pentaho.platform.plugin.services.security.userrole.ldap.NestedLdapAuthoritiesPopulator">

Save the file, then edit /pentaho/server/pentaho-server/pentaho-solutions/system/applicationContext-pentaho-security-ldap.xml.
This and the next step are only necessary if the roles that serve as "parents" to nested roles cannot be returned by a traditional all authorities search.

Add an extraRoles bean to the list of transformers in the ChainedTransformers bean, and set properties for each parent role (represented by example_role below).

<bean id="allAuthoritiesSearch" class="org.pentaho.platform.plugin.services.security.userrole.ldap.search.GenericLdapSearch">
    <!-- omitted -->
    <constructor-arg index="2">
        <bean class="org.apache.commons.collections.functors.ChainedTransformer">
            <constructor-arg index="0">
                <list>
                    <bean class="org.pentaho.platform.plugin.services.security.userrole.ldap.transform.SearchResultToAttrValueList">
                        <!-- omitted -->
                    </bean>
                    <bean class="org.pentaho.platform.plugin.services.security.userrole.ldap.transform.ExtraRoles">
                        <property name="extraRoles">
                            <set>
                                <value>example_role</value>
                            </set>
                        </property>
                    </bean>
                    <bean class="org.pentaho.platform.plugin.services.security.userrole.ldap.transform.StringToGrantedAuthority">
                        <!-- omitted -->
                    </bean>
                </list>
            </constructor-arg>
        </bean>
    </constructor-arg>
</bean>

Save the file, close your text editor, and start the Pentaho Server.
```
sh /usr/local/pentaho/server/pentaho-server/start-pentaho.sh
```

The Pentaho Server can now handle nested roles with LDAP or Active Directory authentication.

LDAP properties

You can configure LDAP values by editing the /pentaho-solutions/system/applicationContext-security-ldap.properties file in your Pentaho Server folder.

Connection information (context)

These entries define connections involving LDAP users (typically administrators) that can execute folder searches.

LDAP Property

Purpose

Example

context.Source.providerUrl

LDAP connection URL

contextSource.providerUrl=ldap://holly:389/DC=Valyant,DC=local

contextSource.userDn

Distinguished name of a user with read access to directory

contextSource.userDn=CN= Administrator, CN=Users,DC=Valyant,DC=local

contextSource.password

Password for the specified user

contextSource.password=secret

Users

These options control how the LDAP server is searched for user names that are entered in the Pentaho login dialog box.

Note: The {0} token will be replaced by the user name from the login dialog box.

Note: The example above defines DC=Valyant,DC=local in contextSource.providerURL. Given that definition, you would not need to repeat that in userSearch.searchBase below because it will be appended automatically to the defined value here.

LDAP Property

Purpose

Example

userSearch.searchBase

Base (by user name) for user searches

userSearch.searchBase=CN=Users

userSearch.searchFilter

Filter (by user name) for user searches. The attribute you specify here must contain the value that you want your users to log into Pentaho with. Active Directory user names are represented by sAMAccountName; full names are represented by displayName.

userSearch.searchFilter=(sAMAccountName={0})

Populator

The populator matches fully distinguished user names from userSearch to distinguished role names for roles those users belong to.

Note: The {0} token will be replaced with the user DN found during a user search; the {1} token is replaced with the user name entered in the login screen.

LDAP Property

Purpose

Example

populator.convertToUpperCase

Indicates whether or not retrieved role names are converted to uppercase

populator.convertToUpperCase=false

populator.groupRoleAttribute

The attribute to get role names from

populator.groupRoleAttribute=cn

populator.groupSearchBase

Base (by user DN or user name) for role searches.

populator.groupSearchBase=ou= Pentaho

populator.groupSearchFilter

The special nested group filter for Active Directory is shown in the example; this will not work with non-MSAD directory servers.

populator.groupSearchFilter= (memberof:1.2.840.113556.1.4.1941: =({0}))

populator.rolePrefix

A prefix to add to the beginning of the role name found in the group role attribute; the value can be an empty string.

populator.rolePrefix=

populator.searchSubtree

Indicates whether or not the search must include the current object and all children. If set to false, the search must include the current object only.

populator.searchSubtree=true

All authorities search

These entries populate the Pentaho Server Access Control List (ACL) roles. These should be similar or identical to the populator entries.

LDAP Property

Purpose

Example

allAuthoritiesSearch.roleAttribute

The attribute used for role values

allAuthoritiesSearch.roleAttribute=cn

allAuthoritiesSearch.searchBase

Base for "all roles" searches

allAuthoritiesSearch.searchBase=ou= Pentaho

allAuthoritiesSearch.searchFilter

Filter for "all roles" searches. Active Directory requires that theobjectClass value be set to group.

allAuthoritiesSearch.searchFilter= (objectClass=group)

All user name search

These entries populate the Pentaho Server ACL users.

LDAP Property

Purpose

Example

allUsernamesSearch.username Attribute

The attribute used for user values

allUsernamesSearch.username Attribute= sAMAccountName

allUsernamesSearch.searchBase

Base for "all users" searches

allUsernamesSearch.searchBase= CN=users

allUsernamesSearch.searchFilter

Filter for "all users" searches

allUsernamesSearch.searchFilter= objectClass=person

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Last updated 21 days ago

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