[Opensim-dev] [Opensim-users] Grid <-> Authentication Service

[dr scofield]

Diva Canto wrote:
> Hi,
>
> We have set up a small OpenSim grid here at UCI, for experimentation.
> We are about to hook it up to the existing campus identity service, but
> before we do that, I thought I'd ask if someone has already done something
> like that, and what your experiences were.
>
> Here's the situation: UCI, like most other organizations, already has identities
> for its community -- 50,000 of them, in our case. These identities are used all 
> over web-based services provided by the departments/units on campus. There is 
> one central ID / authentication service for all of this. So what I want is to reuse 
> that for ID and authentication of grid logins, instead of forcing people to create
> new OpenSim grid accounts -- the proliferation of on-line identities is one
> of the biggest plagues of the internet, right after spam. I don't want new accounts,
> and I don't want our grid to store passwords -- that's the job of the campus-wide
> authentication service, which works pretty well.
>
> The usage scenario is this: pull up the viewer, and type as first name the UCI ID and as last name: uci.edu. That's all. No prior account setting or registration of any kind. The login request will be forwarded to the campus authentication service, which sends back information about the user.
>
> I know we're going to have to tweak the LoginService a little bit.
> Any past experiences doing this? Any general advice?
>   
that makes it rather easy for any of your UCI users to log in as any 
other UCI user. if that's what you want, fine. were i a UCI user, i'd 
not like that...

if you were planning on using the password field as well, that is going 
to require some additional code at the UCI authentication service side 
as the password is not being send in the clear by as a salted MD5 hash, 
so you'd have to generate those for all your UCI users.

    cheers,
    dirk


-- 
dr dirk husemann, mathmatics and computer science, ibm zurich research lab
SL: dr scofield ---- drscofield at xyzzyxyzzy.net ---- http://xyzzyxyzzy.net/
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