The following article gives a basic use case for Liferay's Virtual LDAP Server Plugin. Liferay's EE Virtual LDAP plugin turns Liferay portal into a virtual LDAP server that can be accessed by external LDAP explorer programs or, as in the case of this article, another instance of Liferay Portal. It is used mainly for development purposes to create a quick, lightweight LDAP solution with relative ease.
Resolution
The following steps describe how to set up LDAP with Liferay's virtual LDAP plugin. You will need two instances of liferay installed on two separate machines or virtual machines. The two instances will be referred to as Instance_1 and Instance_2.
- Startup Instance_1 and deploy the Virtual LDAP Server EE from Liferay Marketplace.
- Once it is deployed, as the Administrator, go to: Control Panel > Users and Organizations.
- Add a test user (TEST_USER)
- Startup Instance_2
- As the Administrator, go to: Control Panel > Portal Settings > Authentication > LDAP.
- Click the "Enabled" checkbox. Click save
- Go to: Control Panel > Portal Settings > Authentication > LDAP and add a new LDAP server
- Give the server a name (test).
- Click the "OpenLDAP" radio button and click "Reset Values."
- In the connection settings, input the following and replace IP_ADDRESS with the IP address of the machine running Liferay that has vldap deployed:
- URL: ldap://IP_ADDRESS:11389
- Base DN: o=Liferay
- Principle User: cn=test, o=Liferay
- Credentials: test / {password}
- Click test connection. You should see, "Liferay has connected to the LDAP server."
- In the user mapping section, click the test button. You should see a list of users including the TEST_USER you created in step 3. > Click save.
- Sign out and sign in as the TEST_USER you created in step 3.
Result: Congratulations, you have just imported a user using the Virtual LDAP Server EE plugin!