Grouper Users - Open Discussion List

[Bill Thompson <>]

Building on what Carl said....memberships are stored in the grouper database and can be created by the Grouper Loader. Subjects are (mostly) accessed by reference in realtime via the Subject API, and (usually) are not stored in the grouper database.

Best,

Bill

On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 3:10 PM Carl Waldbieser <> wrote:

Duane,

There is a difference between loading memberships and subjects.
Memberships are loaded with the Grouper Loader, and they may be cron-like.
Subjects come from a subject source (like LDAP or a RDBMS), and they are utilized in a more or less instantaneous fashion.  If you add a subject to your subject source, it immediately becomes available to Grouper.

Thanks,
Carl Waldbieser
ITS Identity Management
Lafayette College

----- Original Message -----
From: "Duane Booher" <>
To: "Coleman, Erik C" <>, "grouper-users" <>
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2018 1:46:16 PM
Subject: Re: [grouper-users] RE: Grouper Newbie - LDAP integration

Hi Erik, thanks for the info. I will look at the examples that you have provided.

I’m not using the TIER grouper containers, instead I’m using the grouper installer option via: java -jar grouperInstaller.jar

When I look at the grouper loader, my understanding (which may be incorrect) is that it uses a cron based approach for syncing between LDAP and grouper? I was hoping for a direct grouper LDAP connection, where grouper would connect to LDAP and get the necessary user id’s from ou=people (this would be a step1a on my list). Then as a group is created/maintained then I was hoping that grouper would also store the group membership also back into LDAP (this would be step2b on my list). I understand that grouper uses a database, so some of these lookups and persistence may be maintained in the grouper database.

In general, I’m having a hard time with this part of the configuration. I’m carefully looking at all of the relevant grouper technical configuration documentation for customizing my grouper/LDAP connection. So if you have any additional grouper links, then that would be great.

Duane

From: <> on behalf of "Coleman, Erik C" <>
Date: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 12:16 PM
To: "" <>
Subject: [grouper-users] RE: Grouper Newbie - LDAP integration

Duane,

We basically approached the same way with our eval—swinging over one-by-one to our LDAP, then to our Shib, then to our own database instance.  Are you using the Grouper Demo Docker containers?

With 2.4, all of your LDAP connections are specified in grouper-loader.properties, so you simply need to change the parameters in there to point to your enterprise LDAP. Change subject.properties in order to point to where your identities (subjects) live in that LDAP. Then you can throw out the LDAP container.

For Shib, you’ll want to upload your own shibboleth2.xml as well as the appropriate sp-key.pem and sp-cert.pem to the Grouper UI container, with settings as you would for any SP configured to connect to your IDP.  Then you can throw out the supplied IDP container.

As a tip, I found it more convenient to bootstrap me in the wheel group so that I have admin access, this is in grouper.properties, which should also go into the Grouper containers:

groups.wheel.use                      = true
groups.wheel.group                    = etc:sysadmingroup
configuration.autocreate.group.name.0 = etc:sysadmingroup
configuration.autocreate.group.description.0 = Grouper Service Admins
configuration.autocreate.group.subjects.0 = ecc


That’s glossing over many of the specific details, but should give you an idea.

-Erik




From: <> On Behalf Of Duane Booher
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 10:20 AM
To:
Subject: [grouper-users] Grouper Newbie - LDAP integration

Hello, I am doing a quick grouper 2.4 evaluation and I have it running on both my personal workstation (Mac Os X) and a redhat 6 server. In both cases I used the grouper installer with the default demo processes. Then I migrated the grouper-ui and grouper-ws applications over to a seperate tomcat container. I am still running the remaining processes out of the installer folder, such as the demo hsqldb, daemon, etc. I have been following the Grouper Deployment Guide, however things are still fuzzy to me.

I have two immediate goals and I hope the community can point me in the right direction:

1) I would now like to connect grouper up with our LDAP for both user lookup and for integration with groups stored in LDAP.

2) I would like to connect the grouper login to our shibboleth/SAML single sign-on.

I am both a LDAP integrator, along with a shib w/ in-common and CAS integrator. But, I do not fully understand the grouper configuration details. So any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
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