Installing and configuring SimpleSAMLphp

Author	Cindy Cicalese
Created	26 May 2023 20:24:15
Last Modified	28 May 2023 15:51:43
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These instructions are tested with MediaWiki CLI. They should work with some modifications in other environments as well. This does require making modifications inside the MediaWiki container, which is NOT advisable, but it is necessary to make the SimpleSAMLphp library code accessible to MediaWiki outside the webroot.

At a command prompt inside the MediaWiki container, go to the directory where you want to install SimpleSAMLphp. By default, this should be /var, but it is possible to install it in other locations. Then, clone the repository into a directory called simplesamlphp using git clone. Check for the latest release tag and check out that release.

cd /var
git clone https://github.com/simplesamlphp/simplesamlphp.git
cd simplesamlphp
git tag -l
git checkout v2.0.4

Create a symlink from your webroot to the public directory of the simplesamlphp installation.

cd /var/www/html
ln -s /var/simplesamlphp/public simplesamlphp

Initialize configuration and metadata. You will need to copy the template files into a location in your webroot. It is convenient when using CLI to put them in a subdirectory of the mediawiki directory (possibly a subdirectory of the SimpleSAMLphp extension) so the volume can be accessed from the host system.

cd /var/www/html/w/extensions/SimpleSAMLphp
mkdir simplesamlphp
mkdir simplesamlphp/config
cp -r /var/simplesamlphp/config/config.php.dist simplesamlphp/config/config.php
cp -r /var/simplesamlphp/config/authsources.php.dist simplesamlphp/config/authsources.php
mkdir simplesamlphp/metadata
cp -r /var/simplesamlphp/metadata/saml20-sp-remote.php.dist simplesamlphp/metadata/saml20-sp-remote.php

Back on your host system, set the environment variable to indicate to the SimpleSAMLphp library where the config files are located.

mw docker env set SIMPLESAMLPHP_CONFIG_DIR /var/www/html/w/extensions/SimpleSAMLphp/config
mw docker mediawiki create