IdP 2.4 question

[Peter Schober]

* Kathy E. Wright <kewrig at clemson.edu> [2014-07-21 13:45]:
> I would like to add and load new Shibboleth SP metadata to our IdP without
> restarting the Tomcat container.   Can you tell me where this setting is
> configured within /opt/shibboleth-idp/conf/

Metadata Providers are defined in relying-party.xml and changes there
either need to be configured to be auto-reloaded (not recommended) or
require a container restart. So avoid changes to that file.
More specifically there's no reason to add a new MetadataProvider for
each new SP.  Instead put them all into the same local file (wrapped
in an EntitiesDescriptor element) and just reference this file in a
MetadataProvider. Then any changes to that file will be picked up
automatically (MetadataProviders can do that, e.g. by adding
maxRefreshDelay="PT1H").

All that is assuming you're managing the metadata of those SPs
yourself, i.e. these are local campus SPs or bilateral SPs you're not
sharing a federation with.
-peter