Middleware Announcements

[Renee Frost <>]

The Internet2 Shibboleth team is pleased to announce the availability of
release 1.1 of its Shibboleth implementation. This new release contains
many improvements and enhancements. A partial list is available by going
to the Shibboleth web site (
http://shibboleth.internet2.edu
) and clicking on "Shibboleth v1.1 Software Now Available" at the top of the page.

This new version will interoperate with the previous 1.0 version. However, the new version does contain a number of important bug fixes. We would recommend that sites that installed 1.0 upgrade to 1.1 as soon as their schedule allows. We have provided an Upgrade Guide; the process seems to be quick and painless.

This release contains functionality that wasn't ready for inclusion in the recent 1.0 release, as well as some additional functionality not previously mentioned. v1.1 includes support for using W2K, NT, and XP as a Shibboleth target platform, using either Apache or IIS as the web server. This release also includes support in the target side SHAR for storing session information in an SQL database. The distributed binaries include the embedded version of the MySQL DB engine. This should provide target sites with new options for robustness and failover support, as well as options in load-balanced web server configurations. Sites can configure Shibboleth to use either the previously supported in-memory cache or the new SQL option.

Other changes include significant enhancements to Attribute Acceptance Policies. Their functionality has been greatly enhanced, and they are now used to configure all aspects of attribute handling by the target, except for requesting specific attributes by sitename. Adding attributes now takes place in one configuration step. In addition, a sample resolver file for using standard LDAP person and inetOrgPerson attributes is included with the origin. Support for a runtime-derived per-requester persistent identifier attribute to support anonymous personalization by targets has been added via an attribute plugin.

With this release, there are separate distributions for origin and target components. Deploy documentation can be found, linked from the "Shibboleth v1.1 Available" entry in the Navigation Bar of the Shibboleth Home Page:

http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/

The target side implementation has been tested on Red Hat Linux versions 7.2 and 7.3, on Solaris 2.8, and on Windows 2000. (It has also been tested on later Red Hat versions, and on Debian, but we do not currently support those environments.) The origin implementation is entirely in java, so there is one package for all platforms. There are separate target packages for RH, Solaris, and Windows. The distribution packages are available from http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/release/shib-download.html

Shibboleth is an Open Source project, and we don't guarantee support. However, if you encounter problems, join the mace-shib-users list @ Internet2 (http://middleware.internet2.edu/shibboleth/shib-misc.shtml#mailinglist), and post a description of your problem; its very likely someone will answer.

If you discover a bug, please post it to our Bugzilla based repository ( http://bugzilla.internet2.edu/shibboleth/). Bugs can be posted against a 1.1 product version.

For those who are so inclined, the source is available from our cvs repository ( http://middleware.internet2.edu/opensaml/cvs.html ). Tarballs containing snapshots of the 1.1 source are also available from http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/release/shib-download.html . These contain documents describing how to compile the new version.

Lastly, a BIG thank you to the people who helped us test this version, and improve the quality of the overall package, the install process, and the documentation.

Steven Carmody
Brown University and Internet2
Shibboleth Project Manager





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