12/18/12 Update: not all is peachy keen. Login and autocreate account works, but logout can be an issue. I need to clear the session cookie when someone logout. Have not gotten around to coding that yet.

After a bit of fiddling around, I finally got ajaxplorer working with (ldap) kerberos5 as the backend authentication/access.

We are using ldap for users directory and kerberos5 for password. It’s a little bit different than what I am used to.

Anyway, I needed to get ajaxplorer working on a large filer for users to be able to access — locally and remotely — essentially our private ‘dropbox’. But getting ajaxplorer working with kerberos was a bitch! At first, I tried using ldap, got that working…. except ldap does not have our password, that’s where kerberos comes in. I thought about writing my own plugin, but damn it, I don’t have time for this.

After lots of googling, experimenting, etc. I found mod_auth_pam, which uses pam for basic HTTP auth. And since we are already using pam_krb5 for logins on our boxes, it’s a perfect solution.

Here is the section in my bootstrap_plugins.php:

$PLUGINS = array(
        "CONF_DRIVER" => array(
                "NAME"          => "serial",
                "OPTIONS"       => array(
                        "REPOSITORIES_FILEPATH" => "AJXP_DATA_PATH/plugins/conf.serial/repo.ser",
                        "ROLES_FILEPATH"        => "AJXP_DATA_PATH/plugins/auth.serial/roles.ser",
                        "USERS_DIRPATH"         => "AJXP_DATA_PATH/plugins/auth.serial",
                        "FAST_CHECKS"           => false,
                        "CUSTOM_DATA"           => array(
                                        "email" => "Email",
                                        "country" => "Country"
                                )
                        )
        ),
        "AUTH_DRIVER" => array(
                "NAME"          => "basic_http",
                "OPTIONS"       => array(
                        "USERS_FILEPATH" => "AJXP_DATA_PATH/plugins/auth.pam/users.ser",
                        "AUTOCREATE_AJXPUSER"   => true,
                        "TRANSMIT_CLEAR_PASS"   => false
                )
        ),
        array(
                "NAME"          => "serial",
                "OPTIONS"       => array(
                        "LOGIN_REDIRECT"        => false,
                        "USERS_FILEPATH"        => "AJXP_DATA_PATH/plugins/auth.serial/users.ser",
                        "AUTOCREATE_AJXPUSER"   => false,
                        "FAST_CHECKS"           => false,
                        "TRANSMIT_CLEAR_PASS"   => false
                )
        ),
        "LOG_DRIVER" => array(
                "NAME" => "text",
                "OPTIONS" => array(
                        "LOG_PATH" => (defined("AJXP_FORCE_LOGPATH")?AJXP_FORCE_LOGPATH:"AJXP_INSTALL_PATH/data/logs/"),
                        "LOG_FILE_NAME" => 'log_' . date('m-d-y') . '.txt',
                        "LOG_CHMOD" => 0770
                )
        )
);

And the section in my /etc/httpd/conf.d/ajaxplorer.conf file:

   < Directory "/usr/share/ajaxplorer">
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride Limit FileInfo
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
        AuthName "Ajaxplorer Access"
        AuthType Basic
        AuthPAM_Enabled on
        Require valid-user
  	php_value error_reporting 2
   < /Directory>

The trick is these two lines for the “basic_http” auth_driver:


"USERS_FILEPATH" => "AJXP_DATA_PATH/plugins/auth.pam/users.ser",
"AUTOCREATE_AJXPUSER" => true,


That then allow my users to login, and on first time, they auth via mod_auth_pam, and ajaxplorer create their account in “AJXP_DATA_PATH/plugins/auth.pam/users.ser”.

NOTE I have to manually create the directory plugins/auth.pam and create an empty users.ser file.

But after that, everything work perfectly.