Configure local operating system registries

These steps set up security based on the local operating system user registry on which WAS is installed. For detailed information about using the local operating system user registry, see Local operating system registries.

For security purposes, the WAS provides and supports the implementation for Windows operating system registries, AIX, Solaris and multiple versions of Linux operating systems. The respective operating system API are called by the product processes (servers) for authenticating a user and other security-related tasks (for example, getting user or group information). Access to these APIs are restricted to users who have special privileges. These privileges depend on the operating system and are described later in this topic.

Consider the following issues:

• The server ID needs to be different from the Windows machine name where the product is installed. For example, if the Windows machine name is vicky and the security server ID is vickyy, the Windows system fails when getting the information (group information, for example) for user vicky.

• WAS dynamically determines whether the machine is a member of a Windows system domain.

• WAS does not support Windows trusted domains.

• If a machine is a member of a Windows domain, both the domain user registry and the local user registry of the machine participate in authentication and security role mapping.

• If we use a Windows domain user ID to install and run WAS, the ID must have the following privileges:
  • Be a member of the domain administrative groups in the domain controller
  • Have the Act as part of the operating system privilege in the domain security policy on the domain controller.
  • Have the Act as part of the operating system privilege in the local security policy on the local machine.
  • Have the Log on as a service privilege on the local machine if the server runs as a service.

• The domain user registry takes precedence over the local user registry of the machine and can have undesirable implications if users with the same password exist in both user registries.

• The user that the product processes run under requires the Administrative and Act as part of the operating system privileges to call the Windows operating system APIs that authenticate or collect user and group information. The process needs special authority, which is given by these privileges. The user in this example might not be the same as the security server ID (the requirement for which is a valid user in the registry). This user logs into the machine (if using the command line to start the product process) or the Log On User setting in the services panel if the product processes have started using the services.

Consider the following points:

• The user that the product processes run under requires the root privilege. This privilege is needed to call the operating system APIs to authenticate or to collect user and group information. The process needs special authority, which is given by the root privilege. This user might not be the same as the security server ID (the requirement is that it should be a valid user in the registry). This user logs into the machine and is running the product processes.

• (UNIX) The user that enables administrative security must have the root privilege if we use the local operating system registry. Otherwise, a failed validation error is displayed.

• (Linux) We might need to have the password shadow file in the system.

The following steps are needed to perform this task initially when setting up security for the first time.

Tasks

1. Click Security > Global security.

2. Under User account repository, select Local operating system and click Configure.

3. Enter a valid user name in the Primary administrative user name field. This value is the name of a user with administrative privileges defined in the registry. This user name is used to access the administrative console or used by wsadmin.

4. Click Apply.

   Server user ID or administrative user

   Specify the short name of the account that is chosen in the second step.

   Server user password

   Password of the account that is chosen in the second step.

5. Select either the Automatically generated server identity

For any changes in this panel to be effective, we need to save, stop, and start all the product servers, including deployment managers, nodes and application servers. If the server comes up without any problems, the setup is correct.

After completed these steps, we have configured WAS to use the local operating system registry to identify authorized users.

What to do next

Complete any remaining steps for enabling security. See Enable security.

Subtopics

• Local operating system registries
  
• Configure user ID for proper privileges for local operating system registries
  
• Local operating system settings
  
• Local operating system wizard settings
  

Related:

Standalone LDAP registries

Select a registry or repository

Enable security

Authorizing access to administrative roles