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  • The customer interface. This is for people who submit tickets.
  • The agent interface. This is for people working on tickets ('admins' if you will)

OTRS Both the interfaces can use various authentication methods, such as a local database, or Active Directory/LDAP. It is also possible to use external authentication , (HTTPBasicAuth) in which case OTRS does not take responsibility for authentication any more, but instead relies on Apache environment headers to provide a username. The is the way forward if you want to use SAML or federated authentication, but there are some issues with.

The biggest issue is that is not possible to provision accounts for customers in OTRS before they  users have logged in. This is because there is no way of knowing a user's details until they have authenticated. To overcome this I wrote a new customer authentication module for OTRS that creates customer accounts on the fly (auto-provisioning).

At the moment we have no use case yet for auto-provisioning agents. This is left as a future exercise, one idea is to auto-provisioning agents based on the value of a specific SAML attribute.

The standard HTTPBasicAuth can be used for the agent interface. 

Below is the recipe for getting OTRS to work with federated authentication using Ubuntu 14.04, OTRS 3.3.8 and mod_auth_mellon 0.7. If you manage to implement it on another combination of software, please let me know.

...

And once that is done, you should be able to authenticate by going to https://otrs.example.org/mellon.

 

Adding the new module to OTRS

 

Create the file Kernel/System/CustomerAuth/HTTPBasicAuthMellon.pm and copy the code below in it:

Code Block
themeMidnight
languageperl
# --
# Kernel/System/CustomerAuth/HTTPBasicAuthMellon.pm
# Provides HTTPBasic authentication for use with Apache's mod_auth_mellon.
# This module auto-provisions customer users.
# Dick Visser <visser@terena.org> 2014-08-22
# Copyright (C) TERENA, http://www.terena.org
# --
# This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. For details, see
# the enclosed file COPYING for license information (AGPL). If you
# did not receive this file, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.txt.
# --
package Kernel::System::CustomerAuth::HTTPBasicAuthMellon;
use strict;
use warnings;
sub new {
    my ( $Type, %Param ) = @_;
    # allocate new hash for object
    my $Self = {};
    bless( $Self, $Type );
    # check needed objects
    for (qw(LogObject ConfigObject DBObject MainObject EncodeObject)) {
        $Self->{$_} = $Param{$_} || die "No $_!";
    }
    $Self->{CustomerUserObject} = Kernel::System::CustomerUser->new( %{$Self} );
    # Mellon environment vars
    $Self->{MailEnvVar}
        = $Self->{ConfigObject}->Get( 'Customer::AuthModule::HTTPBasicAuthMellon::MailEnvVar')
	|| 'MELLON_mail';
    $Self->{FirstNameEnvVar}
        = $Self->{ConfigObject}->Get('Customer::AuthModule::HTTPBasicAuthMellon::FirstNameEnvVar')
	|| 'MELLON_givenName';
    $Self->{LastNameEnvVar}
        = $Self->{ConfigObject}->Get( 'Customer::AuthModule::HTTPBasicAuthMellon::LastNameEnvVar')
	|| 'MELLON_sn';
    $Self->{CustomerIDEnvVar}
        = $Self->{ConfigObject}->Get( 'Customer::AuthModule::HTTPBasicAuthMellon::CustomerIDEnvVar')
	|| 'MELLON_customer_id';
    # Debug 0=off 1=on
    $Self->{Debug} = 1;
    $Self->{Count} = $Param{Count} || '';
    return $Self;
}
sub GetOption {
    my ( $Self, %Param ) = @_;
    # check needed stuff
    if ( !$Param{What} ) {
        $Self->{LogObject}->Log( Priority => 'error', Message => "Need What!" );
        return;
    }
    # module options
    my %Option = ( PreAuth => 1, );
    # return option
    return $Option{ $Param{What} };
}
sub Auth {
    my ( $Self, %Param ) = @_;
    # Get attributes values from environment variables
    my $User       = $ENV{REMOTE_USER};
    my $Mail       = $ENV{$Self->{MailEnvVar}} || 'invalid_email@noreply.com';
    my $FirstName  = $ENV{$Self->{FirstNameEnvVar}} || 'first_name';
    my $LastName   = $ENV{$Self->{LastNameEnvVar}} || 'last_name';
    my $CustomerID = $ENV{$Self->{CustomerIDEnvVar}} || 'default_customer';
    my $RemoteAddr = $ENV{REMOTE_ADDR} || 'Got no REMOTE_ADDR env!';
    # return on no user
    if ( !$User ) {
        $Self->{LogObject}->Log(
            Priority => 'notice',
            Message =>
                "No \$ENV{REMOTE_USER}, so not authenticated yet. Redirecting to authenticate (client REMOTE_ADDR: $RemoteAddr).",
        );
        return;
    }
    # replace parts of login
    my $Replace = $Self->{ConfigObject}->Get(
        'Customer::AuthModule::HTTPBasicAuth::Replace' . $Self->{Count},
    );
    if ($Replace) {
        $User =~ s/^\Q$Replace\E//;
    }
    # regexp on login
    my $ReplaceRegExp = $Self->{ConfigObject}->Get(
        'Customer::AuthModule::HTTPBasicAuth::ReplaceRegExp' . $Self->{Count},
    );
    if ($ReplaceRegExp) {
        $User =~ s/$ReplaceRegExp/$1/;
    }
    # Log Apache environment vars in debug mode
    if ( $Self->{Debug} > 0 ) {
        $Self->{LogObject}->Log(
            Priority => 'debug',
            Message => 'Apache environment vars:'
        );
        foreach my $var (sort keys %ENV) {
            $Self->{LogObject}->Log(
                Priority => 'debug',
                Message =>   $var . "=" . $ENV{$var},
            );
        }
    }
    # log
    $Self->{LogObject}->Log(
        Priority => 'notice',
        Message  => "User '$User' Authentication ok (REMOTE_ADDR: $RemoteAddr).",
    );

    # Auto-provisiong.
    # First check if customer exists
    my %UserTest = $Self->{CustomerUserObject}->CustomerUserDataGet( User => $User );
    if (! %UserTest) {
        $Self->{LogObject}->Log(
            Priority => 'notice',
            Message  => "User '$User' doesn't have an account here yet, provisioning it now",
        );
        # Add new customer
        my $newuser = $Self->{CustomerUserObject}->CustomerUserAdd(
            Source         => 'CustomerUser',
            UserFirstname  => $FirstName,
            UserLastname   => $LastName,
            UserCustomerID => $CustomerID,
            UserLogin      => $User,
            UserPassword   => $Self->{CustomerUserObject}->GenerateRandomPassword(),
            UserEmail      => $Mail,
            ValidID        => 1,
            UserID         => 1,
         );
    }
    # return user
    return $User;
}
1;

 

Configuration

When creating a new customer, we also need data for several other fields: first name, last name, e-mail, and customID. Since mod_auth_mellon copies all the SAML attributes into Apache environment variables anyway, we can use them. The module uses the standard SAML attributes (prefixed with MELLON_ because that's their environment variable name) wherever possible:

 Apache environment variable
First nameMELLON_givenName
Last nameMELLON_sn
e-mail addressMELLON_mail
customerIDMELLON_otrs_customer_id
You can override these values in your
OTRS
configuration
.

 

 

Your configuration
(System/Config.pm)
should include these statements. 
, which at the minimum looks like this:

 

Code Block
themeMidnight
languageperl
    # Customer Auth 
    $Self->{'Customer::AuthModule'} = 'Kernel::System::CustomerAuth::HTTPBasicAuthMellon';
    # Because auto-provisioned users will all have the same e-mail address
    $Self->{CustomerUser}->{CustomerUserEmailUniqCheck} = 0;
    $Self->{'CustomerPanelLoginURL'}    = 'https://otrs.example.com/mellon/login?ReturnTo=/customer.pl';
    $Self->{'CustomerPanelLogoutURL'}   = 'https://otrs.example.com/mellon/logout?ReturnTo=http://www.terena.org';

    # Uncomment to override the environment vars to be used
    #$Self->{'Customer::AuthModule::HTTPBasicAuthMellon::UsernameEnvVar'} = 'MELLON_eduPersonPrincipalName';
    #$Self->{'Customer::AuthModule::HTTPBasicAuthMellon::MailEnvVar'} = 'MELLON_mail';
    #$Self->{'Customer::AuthModule::HTTPBasicAuthMellon::FirstNameEnvVar'} = 'MELLON_givenName';
    #$Self->{'Customer::AuthModule::HTTPBasicAuthMellon::LastNameEnvVar'} = 'MELLON_sn';
    #$Self->{'Customer::AuthModule::HTTPBasicAuthMellon::CustomerIDEnvVar'} = 'MELLON_otrs_customer_id';


    # Agents are NOT auto-provisioned. The will have to be created manually.
    # To find their username, they could first log in as a customer, so that you can see their username
    # in the Customer User Manager overview.
    $Self->{'AuthModule'} = 'Kernel::System::Auth::HTTPBasicAuth';
    $Self->{'LoginURL'} = 'https://otrs.example.com/mellon/login?ReturnTo=/index.pl';
    $Self->{'LogoutURL'}        = 'https://otrs.example.com/mellon/logout?ReturnTo=http://www.terena.org';

 

At this point, you should be able to log in to the site as an admin with your new account.

If you log in to the customer page, your account will be automatically created.

 

I don't even trust my own Perl skills, so use all of this with care (smile)

 

Known limitations

Customers cannot edit their details

Once customers are auto-provisioned, they cannot edit their name, e-mail, or any other values. This might be an issue in your environment. Only agents can edit this.

 

Unknown agents get stuck in an authentication loop

When agents that don't have an account try to log in, they get stuck in an endless authentication loop. Another agent should first create a new agent account.

If the username isn't know yet, then the new agent could first log in to the customer interface. The existing agent can then see what username was used, and use this to create an agent account.