LDAP in-detailed

Configuring Lightweight Directory Access Protocol user registries

To access a user registry using the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), you must know a valid user name (ID) and password, the server host and port of the registry server, the base distinguished name (DN) and, if necessary, the bind DN and the bind password. You can choose any valid user in the user registry that is searchable. You can use any user ID that has the administrative role to log in.

Before you begin

In some LDAP servers, administrative users cannot be searched and thus cannot be used, for example, when cn=root in Tivoli Access Manager. The user is referred to as a WebSphere Application Server security server ID, server ID, or server user ID in the documentation. A server ID user has special privileges when calling some protected internal methods.
Normally, the server ID and password are used to log into the administrative console after you turn on security.
When security is enabled in the product, the primary administrative user name and password are authenticated with the registry during the product startup. If authentication fails, the server does not start. It is important to choose an ID and password that do not expire or change often. If the product server user ID or password need to change in the registry, make sure that the changes are performed when all the product servers are up and running. When changes are to be made in the registry, review the article on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol user registries (LDAP) before beginning this task.

Procedure

1. In the administrative console, click Security > Global security.
2. Under User registries, click LDAP.
3. Enter a valid user name in the Server user ID field. You can either enter the complete distinguished name (DN) of the user or the short name of the user, as defined by the user filter in the Advanced LDAP settings panel. For example, enter the user ID for Netscape browsers. This ID is the security server ID, which is only used for WebSphere Application Server security and is not associated with the system process that runs the server. The server calls the local OS registry to authenticate and obtain privilege information about users by calling the native application programming interfaces (API) in that particular registry.
4. Enter the password of the user in the Server user password field.
5. Select the type of LDAP server to use from the Type list. The type of LDAP server determines the default filters that are used by WebSphere Application Server. These default filters change the Typefield to Custom, which indicates that custom filters are used. This action occurs after you click OK orApply in the Advanced LDAP settings panel. Choose the Custom type from the list and modify the user and group filters to use other LDAP servers, if required.IBM Tivoli Directory Server users can choose IBM Tivoli Directory Server as the directory type. Use the IBM Tivoli Directory Server directory type for better performance. For a list of supported LDAP servers, see the Supported hardware, software, and APIs Web site.
6. Enter the fully qualified host name of the LDAP server in the Host field. You can enter either the IP address or domain name system (DNS) name.
7. Enter the LDAP server port number in the Port field. The host name and the port number represent the realm for this LDAP server in the WebSphere Application Server cell. So, if servers in different cells are communicating with each other using Lightweight Third Party Authentication (LTPA) tokens, these realms must match exactly in all the cells.The default value is 389. If multiple WebSphere Application Servers are installed and configured to run in the same single sign-on domain, or if the WebSphere Application Server interoperates with a previous version of the WebSphere Application Server, then it is important that the port number match all configurations. For example, if the LDAP port is explicitly specified as 389 in a version 5.xconfiguration, and a WebSphere Application Server at version 6.0.x is going to interoperate with the version 5.x server, then verify that port 389 is specified explicitly for the version 6.0.x server.
8. Enter the base distinguished name (DN) in the Base distinguished name field. The base DN indicates the starting point for searches in this LDAP directory server. For example, for a user with a DN of cn=John Doe, ou=Rochester, o=IBM, c=US, specify the base DN as any of the following options assuming a suffix of c=us): ou=Rochester, o=IBM, c=us or o=IBM c=us or c=us. For authorization purposes, this field is case sensitive by default. Match the case in your directory server. If a token is received (for example, from another cell or Lotus Domino) the base DN in the server must match exactly the base DN from the other cell or Domino. If case sensitivity is not a consideration for authorization, enable the Ignore case for authorization option.In WebSphere Application Server, the distinguished name is normalized according to the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) specification. Normalization consists of removing spaces in the base distinguished name before or after commas and equal symbols. An example of a non-normalized base distinguished name is o = ibm, c = us or o=ibm, c=us. An example of a normalized base distinguished name is o=ibm,c=us.
   To interoperate between WebSphere Application Server Version 5 and later versions, you must enter a normalized base distinguished name in the Base Distinguished Name field. In WebSphere Application Server, Version 5.0.1 or later, the normalization occurs automatically during runtime.
   This field is required for all LDAP directories except the Lotus Domino Directory. The Base Distinguished Name field is optional for the Domino server.
9. Optional: Enter the bind DN name in the Bind distinguished name field. The bind DN is required if anonymous binds are not possible on the LDAP server to obtain user and group information. If the LDAP server is set up to use anonymous binds, leave this field blank. If a name is not specified, the application server binds anonymously. See the Base Distinguished Name field description for examples of distinguished names.
10. Optional: Enter the password corresponding to the bind DN in the Bind password field.
11. Optional: Modify the Search time out value. This timeout value is the maximum amount of time that the LDAP server waits to send a response to the product client before stopping the request. The default is 120 seconds.
12. Ensure that the Reuse connection option is selected. This option specifies that the server should reuse the LDAP connection. Clear this option only in rare situations where a router is used to send requests to multiple LDAP servers and when the router does not support affinity. Leave this option selected for all other situations.
13. Optional: Verify that the Ignore case for authorization option is enabled. When you enable this option, the authorization check is case insensitive. Normally, an authorization check involves checking the complete DN of a user, which is unique in the LDAP server and is case sensitive. However, when you use either the IBM Directory Server or the Sun ONE (formerly iPlanet) Directory Server LDAP servers, you must enable this option because the group information that is obtained from the LDAP servers is not consistent in case. This inconsistency affects the authorization check only. Otherwise, this field is optional and can be enabled when a case sensitive authorization check is required. For example, you might select this option when you use certificates and the certificate contents do not match the case of the entry in the LDAP server.You can also enable the Ignore case for authorization option when you are using single sign-on (SSO) between the product and Lotus Domino. The default is enabled.
14. Optional: Select the SSL enabled option if you want to use Secure Sockets Layer communications with the LDAP server.If you select the SSL enabled option, select the appropriate SSL alias configuration from the list in the SSL configuration field. For more information on setting up LDAP for SSL, see Configuring Secure Sockets Layer for the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol client .
15. Optional: In the SSL configuration field, select the Secure Sockets Layer configuration to use for the LDAP connection. This configuration is used only when SSL is enabled for LDAP. The default isDefaultSSLSettings. To modify or create a new SSL configuration, click Security > SSL.
16. Click OK. The validation of the user, password, and the setup do not take place in this panel. Validation is only done when you click OK or Apply in the Global Security panel.
    • If you are enabling security for the first time, complete the remaining steps and go to the Global Security panel. Select LDAP as the active user registry.
    • If security is already enabled, but information on this panel changes, go to the Global Security panel and click OK or Apply to validate your changes. If your changes are not validated, the server might not start.

Results

This set of steps is required to set up the LDAP user registry. This step is required as part of enabling security in the WebSphere Application Server.

Bind Distinguished : it means these are the credentials to login to the LDAP server.

Base distinguished: it is a directory, where the search has to start

The BaseDN describes one level of an LDAP container that an object (such a as a user) belongs to.

The Bind DN is the user object (account) that WebSphere uses in order to connect to the repository.

Source : from IBM site.