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The wiki will be open to the public, with only SAML logins (i.e. no local accounts). New users will have their account automatically created, and are put in the confluence-users group.

Table of Contents

Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have these bits:

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  • A correctly configured apache web server that is able to serve an HTTPS web site (https://example.com).
  • A SAML Identity Provider (IdP).
  • An account on that IdP.
  • An attribute that can be used as username in Confluence (for example eduPersonPrincipalName). Attributes for full name and e-mail are optional but recommended. In this case we assume 'mail' and 'displayName' can be used.
  • The user name of the to-be administrator account. So, if you choose eduPersonPrincipalName as the attribute for username, you need to know your own value (for instance 'dvisser@surfnet.nl').

PostgreSQL

Code Block
apt-get install postgresql

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Edit confluence/WEB-INF/classes/confluence-init.properties and configure confluence.home=/home/confluence.

Upstart script for Confluence

Ubuntu uses the new upstart init scripts, which we should use.

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Once this is complete, shut down Confluence by issuing "stop confluence".

 

mod_auth_mellon

mod_auth_mellon is an Apache module. Ubuntu 14.04 and later contain the correct package. To get things working for Ubuntu 12.04 I recompiled the Debian source packages from the University of Tilburg and made them available in our own APT repository

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And once that is done, you should be able to use federated authentication by going to https://example.com/mellon/login?ReturnTo=%2F

 

 

Confluence - part 2

Now everything is in place to federate Confluence. Make sure that Confluence isn't running any more.

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If for some reason your account isn't an administrator, there is no way to fix this. You should disable the changes from step 3 and restart Confluence so that it doesn't use federated authentication any more. Then go back in and fix the permissions, then change back.


Confluence - mobile theme

The new Confluence feature a dedicated theme for use on mobile devices. This is great, but unfortunately both the login and logout buttons in that theme do not work - they still point to the 'old' static login/logout links.


Login button

I couldn't find any way to do this in Confluence, so I ended up rewriting it in Apache. See the snippet in the Apache config above.


Logout button

Luckily the logout button can be configured in Confluence, but the configuration file is located inside a JAR file (Java ARchive), so it's a little bit of work. For starters, you need the jar command, which is part of openjdk-7-jdk:

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Code Block
languagehtml/xml
        <action name="logout" class="com.atlassian.confluence.user.actions.LogoutAction">
            <interceptor-ref name="defaultStack"/>
            <result name="error" type="velocity">/logout.vm</result>
            <result name="success" type="redirect">/login.action?logout=true</result>
        </action>

to this:

Code Block
languagehtml/xml
        <action name="logout" class="com.atlassian.confluence.user.actions.LogoutAction">
            <interceptor-ref name="defaultStack"/>
            <result name="error" type="velocity">/logout.vm</result>
            <result name="success" type="redirect">/mellon/logout?ReturnTo=%2Fdashboard.action</result>
        </action>

 

Now "jar" everything up again and replace the original jar:

Code Block
languagebash
cd /tmp/jar
jar cf /opt/confluence/confluence/WEB-INF/lib/confluence-5.5.3.jar .

Restart Confluence. You should now also be able to use federated logins on your iPad/etc.

 

jsessionid errors

If unauthenticated users try to access content that is protected, Confluence tries to set jsessionid as part of the URL. This leads to 404 errors like this:

Code Block
NOT FOUND
The requested URL /mellon/login;jsessionid=8A736F43779F96249F6C3DC41067BB98 was not found on this server.

Since the jsessionid part isn't needed, it can be removed uses a rewrite statement (see apache config above).

 

Limit access to the unprotected TCP port

Confluence by default listens to TCP port 8090 on all interface. Since Apache will be the internet facing application, there is no need for Confluence to listen on all interfaces. Even worse, if you do let it listen on the internet then it is trivial to add a REMOTE_USER header and spoof any account. Of course it is good practice to use a firewall to protect this port, but you can limit this in Confluence as well. Since Apache is configured to only connect to the (IPv6) localhost address, this is what you should configure Confluence to use as listening address. As per Tomcat docs, you should add an "address" attribute to the Connector, which is located in conf/server.xml:

<Connector className="org.apache.coyote.tomcat4.CoyoteConnector" port="8090" address="::1" minProcessors="5"