RT::Authen::ExternalAuth(3)

NAME
RT::Authen::ExternalAuth - RT Authentication using External Sources

DESCRIPTION
A complete package for adding external authentication mechanisms to RT. It currently supports LDAP via Net::LDAP and External Database authentication for any database with an installed DBI driver.

It also allows for authenticating cookie information against an external database through the use of the RT-Authen-CookieAuth extension.

UPGRADING
If you are upgrading from an earlier version of this extension, you must remove the following files manually:

    $RTHOME/local/plugins/RT-Authen-ExternalAuth/lib/RT/User_Vendor.pm
    $RTHOME/local/lib/RT/User_Vendor.pm
    $RTHOME/local/lib/RT/Authen/External_Auth.pm

Otherwise you will most likely encounter an error about modifying a read only value and be unable to start RT.

You may not have all of these files. It depends what versions you are upgrading between.

If you are using a vendor packaged RT, your local directories are likely to be somewhere under /usr/local instead of in $RTHOME so you will need to visit Configuration -> Tools -> System Configuration to find your plugin root.

  VERSION NOTES
If you are using RT 3.6, you want to use the 0.05 version.

If you are using RT 3.8.0 or 3.8.1, you may have trouble using this due to RT bugs related to plugins, but you may be able to use 0.08.

0.08_02 or later will not work on 3.8.0 or 3.8.1

If you are using RT 4.0.0 or greater, you must use at least 0.09

MORE ABOUT THIS MODULE
This module provides the ability to authenticate RT users against one or more external data sources at once. It will also allow information about that user to be loaded from the same, or any other available, source as well as allowing multple redundant servers for each method.

The extension currently supports authentication and information from LDAP via the Net::LDAP module, and from any data source that an installed DBI driver is available for.

It is also possible to use cookies set by an alternate application for Single Sign-On (SSO) with that application. For example, you may integrate RT with your own website login system so that once users log in to your website, they will be automagically logged in to RT when they access it.

It was originally designed and tested against:

MySQL v4.1.21-standard MySQL v5.0.22 Windows Active Directory v2003

But it has been designed so that it should work with ANY LDAP service and ANY DBI-drivable database, based upon the configuration given in your $RTHOME/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm

As of v0.08 ExternalAuth also allows you to pull a browser cookie value and test it against a DBI data source allowing the use of cookies for Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication with another application or website login system. This is due to the merging of RT::Authen::ExternalAuth and RT::Authen::CookieAuth. For example, you may integrate RT with your own website login system so that once users log in to your website, they will be automagically logged in to RT when they access it.

INSTALLATION
To install this module, run the following commands:

    perl Makefile.PL
    make
    make install

If you are using RT 3.8.x, you need to enable this module by adding RT::Authen::ExternalAuth to your @Plugins configuration:

    Set( @Plugins, qw(RT::Authen::ExternalAuth) );

If you already have a @Plugins line, add RT::Authen::ExternalAuth to the existing list. Adding a second @Plugins line will cause interesting bugs.

Once installed, you should view the file:

3.4/3.6 $RTHOME/local/etc/ExternalAuth/RT_SiteConfig.pm 3.8 $RTHOME/local/plugins/RT-Authen-ExternalAuth/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm

Then use the examples provided to prepare your own custom configuration which should be added to your site configuration in $RTHOME/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm

AUTHOR Mike Peachey Jennic Ltd. zordrak@cpan.org
        Various Best Practical Developers

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE
Copyright (C) 2008, Jennic Ltd.

This software is released under version 2 of the GNU General Public License. The license is distributed with this package in the LICENSE file found in the directory root.