trivial shibd questions

[Cantor, Scott]

> I was hoping there was a language-specific en_us file, or something easy.

Try finding a simple solution for that on Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac, etc. when coding in C/C++.

> If it were exposed to edit locally, I would probably make
> the error say something like:
> 
> Please include the following message in any email:

That is simple to do, that's just adding static additions to the error template. If you're not modifying the error templates, you're ignoring one of the basic "move to production" steps. Nobody does, but I can't make them (short of making the default something really offensive).
 
I guess you mean make it the default? That just won't help much given all the existing deployments, but it's worth considering.
 
> Yes, our newest apache cluster has a problem, which was exposed while
> everyone was driving home between 5:00 and 6:00 pm last Friday. The lag
> in response caused many people to think we had a Shibboleth Outage, when
> in fact we did not.

On the IdP, you mean? You're probably never going to get around that, unfortunately. Running an IdP (with any protocol) means that all login problems become yours first. Pushing back on that requires being very ruthless about forcing people to own their own problems, and it takes a lot of years before they get the message. Most people can't get away with the attitude required to make that adjustment happen organizationally.

Nothing the SP does will make that problem a lot better, I don't think.

> If/when you happen to edit the source for the typo, feel free to modify
> the error text as you see fit. Maybe local error text files could be a
> feature request for shibd v3.

The basic ability to add material to the error pages has been there since V1, and I distribute my own starter templates here for my community to use to at least attempt to get them to use better look and feel and that kind of thing. If you mean changing the error messages into a catalog, I think the cost is prohibitive for a project in our financial state.

-- Scott