Java JDK 1.6 Breaks Luminis 4 to Google SAML SSO

Posted: April 1, 2011 in Break/Fix Stuff

Where I work we use SunGard Higher Education’s web portal, Luminis (Version 4, not platform 5).  We also have Single Sign On (SSO) with Google Gmail set up using SAML.  The SAML process is using code adopted and adapted from VCCC, which they graciously posted to www.lumdev.net (thanks guys!).

Recently, we applied patches that upgraded the Java environment on the Luminis server from 1.5 to 1.6.  It promptly broke our SSO implementation.  This is nothing new, as every time we touch Luminis it breaks something (usually SSO).  However this time it was a bit more difficult to figure out the fix than normal.

As it turns out, JDK 1.6 now natively includes the XML security library required to sign the SAML response for Google.  Trouble is, they included an older version of the library, that doesn’t work with SAML 2.0 (which Google requires).  Oracle made note of it here –>  http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E19316-01/821-1818/gjwfc/index.html

To apply the fix specified in the post from Oracle, you might have to make sure that the JAVA_ENDORSED_DIRS parameter is explicitly set in your environment.  In our Luminis 4 setup we had to add two lines to our .cprc (hidden) file:

JAVA_ENDORSED_DIRS = $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/endorsed

and

export JAVA_ENDORSED_DIRS

Without these lines, the environment would not recognize the xmlsec.jar file we put there, and relied on the older built-in library version.

If this info helped you out, comment and let me know!

JaMmeR

Comments
  1. JaMmeR says:

    I should add that in addition to the xmlsec.jar file the Oracle article tells you to put in the “endorsed” directory, you should also add the xmldsig.jar file too.

  2. Kevin says:

    Thanks for this post. It definitely helped me out during our upgrade this past weekend. I reposted your article along with a link here on lumdev: http://www.lumdev.net/node/3218

    • JaMmeR says:

      Excellent! I’m so glad this helped you. And thank you for your original post in LumDev! We wouldn’t have SSO to Gmail if it weren’t for that!

      • Jeremy says:

        Hours of wondering why SSO was broke and thankfully I came across your site. Thanks for the post!

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s