So a few months back we released Joomla! 1.5 which is really cool however like everything people are taking a while to upgrade. For a lot of people this is a problem bcause some components they want to use aren’t quite updated for 1.5, don’t work 100% properly in 1.5’s legacy mode or just plain don’t work at all.

An example of this is Project Fork. It appears to mostly work in legacy mode but it doesn’t like the users. The reason for this is a query that is silently failing which means that it can’t load users. The fix is available from the following location: http://pasamio.com/downloads/projectfork_controlpanelfix.zip. You can apply it by downloading the zip file and extract the controlpanel.class.php file to the /administrator/components/com_hydra/classes directory and overwriting the existing file that is there (you might want to have a copy of that first). This should fix up the user system for Project Fork in 1.5 when accessed from the control panel.

Hopefully this helps someone out 😉

Today I’ve been working on some new stuff for Joomla! to enable SSO between disparate Joomla! instances. I’ve tested it on Joomla! 1.0 and 1.5 in legacy mode. I’ll do some more work later to get it working with Joomla! 1.5 in native mode and to better integrate with JAuthTools for 1.5 (to utilise the SSO system that I’ve written for 1.5). If you’re interested, check out the JAuthTools SVN here: http://joomlacode.org/svn/jauthtools/sso/joomla10x/soapsso. If you check it out you can use the install from directory feature to install it into your test sites. I’ll have packages up in the next few days.

I’m also looking at doing some work on the JAuthTools for 1.5 to improve support. There appears to be some issues so I want to get it back up and running as well as porting/merging some of the features from the LDAP SSI into 1.5 and the LDAP Authentication plugin. I’ll probably also do some update to docs on the wiki as well to reflect the new features.

Things on my todo list after I clean up my released JAuthTools plugins:

• Backlink Manager
• JAuthTools Manager
• JDiagnostics for 1.5

This post is going to be a technical post on what goes on behind the scenes of the components. For me this is easier than writing the how to documentation on things but it will give those who are interested the knowledge they need so really it’ll be a how to with technical bits. So without any further ado, here it is!
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A lot of emails I get are with regards to deploying JAuthTools and Microsoft Active Directory (AD). AD doesn’t make things easy for users in the LDAP interface: its case sensitive, has everything in capitals, disallows anonymous searching (though users can bind anonymously and see,well, nothing) and has an interesting default layout (e.g. CN=Users instead of OU=Users). By default Joomla! 1.0.x doesn’t have the ability to log items which is a function of the system (e.g. there are very few functions that run purely in the ‘background’) which makes it hard to diagnose things that are going wrong. There is a small tool I use called JLogger which is basically a mambot API loader and a component to view the logs. Its pretty primitive and I haven’t ‘released’ it because it hasn’t had anywhere enough work done on it (it is available via Subversion, zip files together to create installable packages) but it was one of the first step towards diagnostic tools, and this is another step.

Recently I released JDiagnostic, a tech demo of a tool that I hope will evolve into a launching pad for a wide range of useful tools, tests and diagnostics. At present it solves the above stated problem: MSAD integration. Its a step by step wizard configurator for Active Directory, with tests along the way. At the end it configures the LDAP SSI and Joomla! LDAP mambots with as much details as it can (what you’ve supplied) leaving you hopefully with a consistent and working Active Directory setup, without the pain of having to read through logs to see what is happening.

You can check out JDiagnostic on the Pasamio’s Projects FRS page.

So I thought I’d start out with something I think is pretty cool: with a few tweaks you can fully integrate your LDAP system into Joomla! authentication system. Frontend and backend. Thats right you can use LDAP Tools to authenticate your users, and you can even plug it into JACLPlus or similar if you’re using that in your corporate environment. So I reckon thats pretty cool, but what if you don’t have an LDAP server to begin with?

Well, I’m glad you asked that question, because I’ve got it covered as well! I’ve written up a simple starters guide on how to get an LDAP server up and running and get Joomla! authenticating into it. Its mostly step by step and I’ve tested it out running Debian and Mac OS X 10.4 with the standard OpenLDAP instances that ship with those environments. Not only that but when you complete the tutorial theres a sample configuration for both Joomla! 1.0 and 1.5 so you can get up and running easily!

Lastly I’ve released 1.0.3 of JAuthTools for Joomla! 1.0 which adds support for LDAP powered administrator login (previously it relied on caching your password from the front end), a small refactoring of authentication options and some fixes in the XML files for missing or short descriptions. As always this is tested against Microsoft Active Directory, OpenLDAP and Novell eDirectory to see if they work and there are samples of known good set ups for those environments.

So you’ve read all of this and you’re wondering where you can the information from so heres the answer: for JAuthTools 1.0.3 you can go to the File Release Section on Joomla!Code, for the sample guides, the alterations required to the Joomla! Core to get back end login and much more documentation you can check it out at the JAuthTools wiki.

So what are you waiting for? Good luck! 🙂