configuring shibboleth on AWS using ELB

Tue Dec 10 01:37:27 EST 2019

In the continuing saga of me trying to get shibboleth to work on AWS EC2 with a load balancer…I removed the load balancer and added redirect to https (and generated local SSL cert files and pointed to them in my ssl.conf) and shibboleth is now working perfectly on my server.

So, my next question…for those of you that have gotten this working…did you use a network load balancer, or an application load balancer?

I have been trying with an application LB and have been told that I probably need to use NLB.

Deirdre Kirmis
Technology Services
Arizona State University Library
480-965-7240

From: users <users-bounces at shibboleth.net> On Behalf Of Nate Klingenstein
Sent: Tuesday, December 3, 2019 6:49 PM
To: Shib Users <users at shibboleth.net>
Subject: Re: configuring shibboleth on AWS using ELB

It's hard to tell you without actually seeing your configuration, but the only other possible cause I can think of would be a badly misconfigured IdP initiated setup. If you're working with SP first, it's probably one of those two issues: metadata or server misconfiguration.

On Tue, Dec 3, 2019, 8:59 AM Deirdre Kirmis <Deirdre.Kirmis at asu.edu<mailto:Deirdre.Kirmis at asu.edu>> wrote:
In fact, everywhere that I have ServerName configured…I have it configured as https://<dns name pointing to my ELB><https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__-253cdns-2520name-2520pointing-2520to-2520my-2520ELB-253e&d=DwMFaQ&c=l45AxH-kUV29SRQusp9vYR0n1GycN4_2jInuKy6zbqQ&r=X1YAM2yWs1HIcWRXyPCSUtCKxhQO748y834uz5ZFnTY&m=A8Tymnrba7nWkUFW2RC0axu4YwlUMsQmgsyYm6sFrtg&s=jpJ0l3Xjk-tu2lRcaCW0qc7RC6Zgx5CisNfT2gRvzdU&e=>:443

Is that correct? Is there some other configuration that I missed?

Deirdre Kirmis
Technology Services
Arizona State University Library
480-965-7240

From: Deirdre Kirmis
Sent: Tuesday, December 3, 2019 8:34 AM
To: Nate Klingenstein <ndk at signet.id<mailto:ndk at signet.id>>; Shib Users <users at shibboleth.net<mailto:users at shibboleth.net>>
Subject: RE: configuring shibboleth on AWS using ELB

So, I do already have the ServerName directive pointing to the CNAME record that I set up for the ELB, in all instances of “ServerName” in the config files (ie: httpd.conf, ssl.conf, etc) .. those files are pointing to the DNS entry for the load balancer. Everywhere that I am referencing my site is using that domain.

Deirdre Kirmis
Technology Services
Arizona State University Library
480-965-7240

From: Nate Klingenstein <ndk at signet.id<mailto:ndk at signet.id>>
Sent: Tuesday, December 3, 2019 6:48 AM
To: Deirdre Kirmis <Deirdre.Kirmis at asu.edu<mailto:Deirdre.Kirmis at asu.edu>>; Shib Users <users at shibboleth.net<mailto:users at shibboleth.net>>
Subject: RE: configuring shibboleth on AWS using ELB

Deirdre,

Yes, it will work fine.  If you're using Apache, you need to virtualize the virtual host with the right directives, generally ServerName loadbalancer.asu.edu:443<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__loadbalancer.asu.edu-3A443&d=DwMFaQ&c=l45AxH-kUV29SRQusp9vYR0n1GycN4_2jInuKy6zbqQ&r=X1YAM2yWs1HIcWRXyPCSUtCKxhQO748y834uz5ZFnTY&m=A8Tymnrba7nWkUFW2RC0axu4YwlUMsQmgsyYm6sFrtg&s=UkQd_pfmLQVgwJjm-rje5iaMJfIVrxXCU9MG7dZ2eyk&e=>, so that it "thinks" it's the load balancer AND your metadata needs to reflect this.  You can do the same with the Site directive in IIS.  Many SP's are deployed like this.

By virtualization, essentially, the web server needs to "think" it's the load balancer when examining inbound messages and generating outbound requests.  That's all.

Take care,

Nate.

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-----Original message-----
From: Deirdre Kirmis
Sent: Tuesday, December 3 2019, 6:26 am
To: Nate Klingenstein; Shib Users
Subject: Re: configuring shibboleth on AWS using ELB
Nate, thank you so much for your response. Yes, my instance is behind a load-balancer, but I have a DNS entry pointing to the ELB AWS domain, which is what I am using for my SP address. What do you mean by "Get the virtualization on your instance to match ELB"? Will I be able to make this work?
Thank you!

Deirdre Kirmis
Web Application Developer
Discovery Services
ASU Library
Arizona State University
480-965-7240

________________________________
From: users <users-bounces at shibboleth.net<mailto:users-bounces at shibboleth.net>> on behalf of Nate Klingenstein <ndk at signet.id<mailto:ndk at signet.id>>
Sent: Tuesday, December 3, 2019 2:11 AM
To: Shib Users <users at shibboleth.net<mailto:users at shibboleth.net>>
Subject: RE: configuring shibboleth on AWS using ELB

Deirdre,

> however in my server log I get an error that the attributes are null.  When I try to "fetch" my site metadata, it just spins and never comes back as uploaded. When I manually upload the file, it acts like it was successful, but when I try the test it says my site is not registered. What am I doing wrong?

Sorry, in my haste, I missed this part of your message.  It's most likely that your site is behind a load balancer(obviously) and SAMLtest can't issue queries directly to individual nodes behind a load balancer.  Even if it could, it would receive the wrong answer.  Alternative possibilities exist, but this one looks pretty clear.  Get the virtualization on your instance to match ELB and then type in ELB as your IdP address.

You'd eventually have to do this with any IdP, so this is far from a fruitless exercise.

Take care,

Nate.

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