Jive Messenger LDAP Guide

Introduction

This document details how to configure your Jive Messenger installation to use an external LDAP store when authenticating users.

Background

LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) has emerged as a dominant standard for user authentication and for storage of user profile data. It serves as a powerful tool for large organizations (or those organizations integrating many applications) to simplify user management issues.

By default, Jive Messenger stores all user data in a database and performs authentication using database lookups. The LDAP module replaces that functionality and allows Jive Messenger to:

This document will guide you through preparing your LDAP server and provide details about how to install the LDAP module on Jive Messenger. These instructions assume that you're a competent LDAP user, and that you're familiar with Jive Messenger setup issues. The iPlanet Directory Server 5.0 LDAP server was used for development and testing, but any LDAP compliant server should also work.

Choosing an LDAP storage mode

Two modes for storing user data in an LDAP directory are supported:

  1. Mixed Mode (LDAP and User Database) -- Username, name and email are stored in LDAP. All Jive-specific data is stored in the Jive Messenger user database. This mode requires no changes to your LDAP directory.
  2. Pure LDAP Mode -- All user data is stored in LDAP, including Messenger-specific data. This mode requires you to make changes to your LDAP schema.
The first option is easier to setup and is generally the better solution. However, the second option is also appropriate in some cases.

Configuration

In order to configure your server to use LDAP you need complete the following tasks:

  1. Stop Messenger.
  2. Edit MESSENGER_HOME/config/jive-messenger.xml as described below.
  3. Restart Messenger.

Configure Messenger

Open the Messenger configuration file MESSENGER_HOME/config/jive-messenger.xml in your favorite editor and add or change the following settings:

Below is a sample set up.


<jive>
...
  <UserProvider>
    <properties>
      <className>org.jivesoftware.messenger.ldap.LdapUserPropertiesProvider</className>
    </properties>
    <info>
      <className>org.jivesoftware.messenger.ldap.LdapUserInfoProvider</className>
    </info>
  <UserProvider>
  <ldap>
    <host>myhost.com</host>
    <port>389</port>
    <usernameField>uid</usernameField>
    <emailField>mail</emailField>
    <baseDN>o=mycompany, c=mycountry</baseDN>
    <nameField>cn</nameField>
    <adminDN>cn=ldap-administrator</adminDN>
    <adminPassword>adm1npwd</adminPassword>
    <debugEnabled>false</debugEnabled>
    <sslEnabled>false</sslEnabled>
  </ldap>
...
</jive>