Configuring custom user registries

Use the following information to configure standalone custom registries through the administrative console.

 

Before you begin

Before you begin this task, implement and build the UserRegistry interface. For more information on developing custom user registries refer to Developing custom user registries . The following steps are required to configure custom user registries through the administrative console.

 

Procedure

  1. Click...

  2. Enter a valid user name in the Server user ID field.

    This ID is the security server ID, which is only used for WAS security and is not associated with the system process that runs the server. The server calls the local OS user registry to authenticate and obtain privilege information about users by calling the native APIs in that particular user registry.

  3. Enter the password of the user in the Server user password field.

  4. For the Custom registry class name field, enter the complete location of the dot-separated class name that implements the interface...

      com.ibm.websphere.security.UserRegistry interface

    For the sample, this file name is com.ibm.websphere.security.FileRegistrySample.

    The file exists in the WAS class path preferably in...

      app_server_root/lib/ext

    This file exists in all the product processes. Thus, this file exists in the cell class path and in all of the node class paths.

    The sample provided is intended to familiarize you with this feature. Do not use this sample in an actual production environment.

  5. Add your custom registry class name to the class path.

    It is recommended that you add the Java Archive (JAR) file that contains your custom user registry implementation to the app_server_root/classes directory.

  6. Optional: Select the Ignore case for authorization option for the authorization to perform a case insensitive check.

    Enabling this option is necessary only when your user registry is case insensitive and does not provide a consistent case when queried for users and groups.

  7. Click Apply if you have any other additional properties to enter for the registry initialization.

  8. Optional: Enter additional properties to initialize your implementation.

    1. Click Custom properties | New.

    2. Enter the property name and value.

      For the sample, enter the following two properties. It is assumed that the users.props file and the groups.props file are in the customer_sample directory under the product installation directory. We can place these properties in any directory that you choose and reference their locations through custom properties. However, make sure that the directory has the appropriate access permissions.

      Property name Property value
      usersFile ${USER_INSTALL_ROOT}/customer_sample /users.props
      groupsFile ${USER_INSTALL_ROOT}/customer_sample /groups.props

      Samples of these two properties are available in users.props file and groups.props file .

      The Description, Required, and Validation Expression fields are not used and can remain blank.

      In a Network Deployment environment where multiple WAS processes exist, such as cell and multiple nodes in different machines, these properties are available for each process. Use the USER_INSTALL_ROOT relative name to locate any files, as this name expands to the product installation directory. If this name is not used, ensure that the files exist in the same location in all the nodes.

      WebSphere Application Server version 4-based custom user registry is migrated to the custom user registry based on the com.ibm.websphere.security.UserRegistry interface.

    3. Click Apply.

    4. Repeat this step to add other additional properties.

  9. Click OK and complete the required steps to turn on security.

 

Results

This set of steps is required to set up the custom user registry and to enable security in WebSphere Application Server.

Note: The security component of WAS expands a selected list of variables when enabling security. See Variable settings for more detail.

 

What to do next

  1. Complete the remaining steps, if you are enabling security.

  2. Validate the user and password by clicking OK or Apply on the Global security panel. Save and synchronize in the cell environment.

  3. After security is turned on, save, stop, and start all the product servers, including cell, nodes, and all of the application servers, for any changes to take effect. If the server comes up without any problems, the setup is correct.

 

See also


Custom user registry settings
FileRegistrySample.java file


Related tasks

Developing custom user registries
Migrating custom user registries
Select a user registry
UserRegistry interface methods