05 December 2011, 7:11

Hi there,

are there any docs on using institutions? e.g. If one institution is LDAP enabled but another isn't, how to login to the that LDAP enabled institution? Is there a URL for it? The front page always seems to want to authenticate against a particular institution.

thanks,

Alistair

05 December 2011, 14:32

Hello Alistair,

Could you maybe please provide a screenshot with what you mean by "The front page always seems to want to authenticate against a particular institution"? Normally, you go to the homepage and then just log in using the login box. Mahara knows your credentials and logs you in and gives you the correct theme if you have happened to set up an institution theme.

When you are connected to LDAP, you should be able to use the standard Mahar homepage. If you have SSO set up, you'll be re-directed to your SSO login page. If you have MNet set up (XMLRPC) to Moodle, you need to log in to Moodle and click on the network servers link.

Cheers

Kristina

05 December 2011, 14:51

Hi Alastair,

It all happens on the front page login.  The username is first looked up to see if it exists in the user table and if it's already there, the authentication method is determined by the existing record.

If no record is found, all the authentication 'instances' with "we auto-create users" enabled are tried one by one to see if any of them are happy to authenticate the username/password.  So if there's an LDAP auth instance in the list, and the username/password matches in the directory, the user is created automatically, put into the institution associated with that auth. instance, and all subsequent logins for that username will be checked against the same LDAP directory.

You can change users' authentication methods in the admin area of the site (account settings page, linked from search users), in case you need to switch existing users from having locally stored passwords to LDAP, etc.

06 December 2011, 4:10

thanks Kristina and Richard. That makes it clear now. I was perhaps expecting separate URLs for each institution but I see how to control access based on your help.

many thanks,

Alistair