The purpose of the eduGAIN Connectivity Check 2 is to identify eduGAIN Identity Providers (IdP) that are not properly configured. In particular it checks if an IdP properly loads and consumes SAML2 metadata which contains the eduGAIN Service Providers (SP). The check results are published on the public eduGAIN Connectivity Check 2 web page (https://technical-test.edugain.org/eccs2/). The main purpose is to increase the service overall quality and user experience of the eduGAIN interfederation service by making federation and Identity Provider operators aware of configuration problems.
The check is performed by sending a SAML authentication request to each eduGAIN IdP and then follow the various HTTP redirects. The expected result is a login form that allows users to authenticate (typically with username/password) or an error message of some form. For those Identity Providers that output an error message, it can be assumed that they don't consume eduGAIN metadata properly or that they suffer from another configuration problem. There are some cases where the check will generate false positives, therefore IdPs can be excluded from checks as is described below.
The Identity Providers are checked once per day. Therefore, the login requests should not have any significant effect on the log entries/statistics of an Identity Provider. Also, no actual login is performed because the check cannot authenticate users due to missing username and password for the IdPs. Only Identity Providers are checked but not the Service Providers.
The eduGAIN Connectivity Check 2 is configured to maintain a history of 7 days of the results collected.
If this page does not answer to your questions or you need some more information about this service, please contact us on support@edugain.org.
The check executed by the service follows these steps:
For each IdP that it was not manually disabled by the eduGAIN Operations Team or by IdP administrator via "robots.txt", the check verifies the SSL certificate of the IdP, creates a Wayfless URL for each SP involved and retrieves the IdP login page.
It expects to find the HTML form with a username and password field. Therefore, no complete login will happen at the Identity Provider because the check stops at the login page.
The SPs used for the check are "SP Demo" (https://sp-demo.idem.garr.it/shibboleth) from IDEM GARR AAI and the "AAI Viewer Interfederation Test" (https://attribute-viewer.aai.switch.ch/interfederation-test/shibboleth) from SWITCHaai. These SPs might change in the future if needed.
The SAML authentication request is not signed. Therefore, authentication request for any eduGAIN SP could be created because the SP's private key is not needed.
The tool uses the following statuses for IdPs:
| Status | UI Color | Description and results |
|---|---|---|
| ERROR | Red |
|
| OK | Green |
|
| DISABLED | White |
|
pattern_username = '<input[\s]+[^>]*((type=\s*[\'"](text|email)[\'"]|user)|(name=\s*[\'"](name)[\'"]))[^>]*>';
pattern_password = '<input[\s]+[^>]*(type=\s*[\'"]password[\'"]|password)[^>]*>';
There are some situations where the check cannot work reliably. In those cases, it is possible to disable the check for a particular IdP.
The so far known cases where the check might generate a false negative are:
In cases where an IdP cannot be reliably checked, it is necessary to create or enrich the robots.txt file on the IdP's web root with:
User-agent: ECCS Disallow: /
The eduGAIN Connectivity Check 2 test web page is available at https://technical-test.edugain.org/eccs2
| Parameter name | Example |
|---|---|
date | date=2020-02-20 |
reg_auth | reg_auth=https://reg.auth.example.org |
idp | idp=https://idp.example.org/idp/shibboleth |
status | status=ERROR |
Example:
https://technical-test.edugain.org/eccs2?reg_auth=http://www.idem.garr.it/&status=ERROR
The eduGAIN Connectivity Check service 2 provides a JSON feed on the monitoring results.
The table below describes the actions that can be performed by replacing "##ACTION##" in the URL:
https://technical-test.edugain.org/eccs2/api/##ACTION##
| Action Name (JSON) | Action Description |
|---|---|
eccsresults | Returns all the eduGAIN Connectivity Check 2 service results |
fedstats | Returns all the federation statistics collected by the eduGAIN Connectivity Check 2 service. |
The table below, instead, describes the JSON parameters that actions can use:
https://technical-test.edugain.org/eccs2/api/##ACTION##?##PARAMETER##=<value>
| Action Name (JSON) | Parameter Name (JSON) | Parameter Description | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| date | Returns all the service results for a specific date. | date=2020-02-20 |
| reg_auth | Returns all the service results for a specific Registration Authority. | reg_auth=https://reg.auth.example.org |
| idp | Returns the service results for a specific IdP by its entityID. | idp=https://idp.example.org/idp/shibboleth |
| status | Returns all the service results for a specific Status:
| status=ERROR |
| format | Formats the service results in a simple way | format=simple |
Example URL:
https://gitlab.geant.org/marco.malavolti/eccs2