User management
Last updated
Last updated
The Snow Owl Terminology Server has two different ways to manage users. The primary authentication and authorization service is the LDAP Directory Server. The secondary option is a file-based database, used only for administrative purposes. Whenever user access has to be granted or revoked the following methods could be applied.
This is only applicable to the default deployment setup where a co-located OpenLDAP server is used alongside the Terminology Server.
There are several ways to access and manage an OpenLDAP server, hereby we will only describe one of them, through the Apache Directory Studio.
Apache Directory Studio is an open-source, free application. It is available to download for different platforms (Windows, macOS, and Linux).
Before accessing the LDAP database there is one technical prerequisite to satisfy. The OpenLDAP server has to be accessible from the machine Apache Directory Studio is installed. The best and most secure way to achieve that is to set up an SSH tunnel. Follow this link to an article that describes how to configure an SSH tunnel using PuTTY and Windows.
The OpenLDAP server uses port 389 for communication. This is the port that needs to be tunneled through the SSH connection. Here is what the final configuration looks like in PuTTY:
Once the SSH tunnel works, it's time to set up our connection in Apache DS. Go to File -> New -> LDAP Connection and set the following:
Hit the "Check Network Parameter" button to verify the network connection.
Go to the next page of the wizard and provide your credentials. The default Bind DN and Bind password can be found in the Terminology Server release package under ./snow-owl/docker/.env.
Hit the "Check Authentication" button to verify your credentials. Hit Finish to complete the setup procedure.
All users and groups should be browseable now through the LDAP Browser view:
To grant access to a new user an LDAP entry has to be created. Go to the LDAP Browse view and right-click on the organization node, then New -> New Entry:
It is the easiest to use an existing entry as a template:
Leave everything as is on the Object Classes page, then hit Next. Fill in the new user's credentials:
On the final page, double click on the userPassword row and provide the user's password:
Hit Finish to add the user to the database.
Now we need to assign a role for the user. Before going forward, get ahold of the user's DN using the LDAP Browser view:
Select the desired role group in the Browser view and add a new attribute:
Select the attribute type uniqueMember and hit Finish:
Paste the user's DN as the value of the attribute and hit Enter to make your changes permanent:
To revoke access the user has to be deleted from the list of users:
And also has to be removed from the role group:
To change either the first or last name, or the password of a user, just edit any of the attributes in the user editor:
There is a configuration file ./snow-owl/docker/configs/snowowl/users that contains the list of users with their credentials encrypted. The passwords are encrypted using the bcrypt hash algorithm (variant $2a$). This method of authentication should be used for testing or internal purposes only, users added here will have elevated privileges.
To apply any changes made to the users file the Terminology Server has to be restarted afterward.
To grant access the users file has to be amended with the new user and its credentials. There are several ways to encrypt a password using the bcrypt algorithm but here is one that is easy and available on most of the Linux variants. The package called htpasswd has to be installed:
It will prompt for the password and will amend the file with the new user at the end.
Simply remove the user's line from the file and restart the service.
Remove the user's line from the file and regenerate the credentials according to the Grant user access section.
