Sunday, November 9, 2008

LDAP Unwrapped

Every time I configure a Documentum repository for LDAP Synchronization I start out impressed with the new features that have been added to the latest version, but end up frustrated with the myriad of problems to solve to get the synch to actually work.

The first thing you have to do is download the latest bug fixes, to avoid what always happens to me: shagging after errors on EMC Developer Network and searching and searching and finally finding some reference to bugs and fixes. The ftp address for D6 sp1 fixes is ftp://dev_pre:qa5.grN6@ftp2.lss.emc.com/sustaining/Content_Server/6.0_SP/LDAP .

The appendix below lists the bugs that are currently fixed. These fixes will make the synchronization actual work if you have more than one configuration set up to run in succession.

Start with the User Directory
You need to engage the LDAP administrator in order to determine whether the group membership structure of LDAP and if it makes sense to use it, that is, are the groups setup with content management in mind or are they a mixture of file system security and ad hoc assignments.

Also, have the user accounts been setup consistently? For example, Active Directory works fine with accounts set up like “smith,john” and “smith.joe”, however Documentum throws an error while processing the “smith.joe” because of the period.


You’d think managing group membership from one source application is easier than from multiple applications, however decoupling LDAP groups with Documentum groups may be more practical given the differing purposes and rules within each application. The classification rules (driven in part by group/role definitions) for a content management system are usually different and definitely more robust than those of a file system.

Automatic creation of user’s cabinets from LDAP
It’s not obvious how to do this from the LDAP configuration form. From the LDAP Server Configuration Properties’s mapping tab you have to add the following:
- Property: default_folder
- Type: dm_user
- Map To: /${cn}
- Map Type: Expression

This mapping will create a cabinet for each LDAP user as they are added to the repository. The cabinet will be owned by the user and will be private to that user. This cabinet will be the user’s home cabinet.

Appendix: D6 SP1 LDAP Bug Fixes


Bug fixes in LDAP_DOCAPP_HOTFIX
153994 - Unable to create LDAP config object on AIX/BEA as it throws java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError (It applies to all OS/Appserver combinations)
153355 - The Diretory type property is nto properly set while creation of LDAP config object
153322 - DA hangs on the Mapping tab while creation of LDAP config object
151022 - Cannot create LDAP config object with out setting proper OU info
150397 - LDAP config object cannot pull the SamAccountName attribute in AD2000 and AD mixed mode
151570 - Cannot create proper LDAP config object

Bug fixes in D6SP1_dmldap_hotfix
145896 - When using "\" in the CN values for LDAP, the LDAP synchronization propagates the users to Documentum properly but group membership synchronization fails because of this special character.
149446 - LDAP Synch fails when using subtype of dm_user
151224,154269 - LDAP Users with apostrophes in their names (i.e Robert O’Leary) have been successfully imported to Documentum. However, due to the apostrophe in the user name a DQL query is failing.
149443 - LDAP Synch fails when mapped attribute is null on Directory server
154399 - LDAP Sync jobs tries to deactivate the user even though the user is not present in the docbase.
154511 - If dm_ldap_config is to configure to map LDAP attributes to DocBase attributes of a subtype of dm_user, running LDAP sync failes to populate the additional attributes introduced in my subtype with LDAP data.
154704 - LDAP Sync throws DmLdapException:: THREAD: [ACTIVE] ExecuteThread: '3' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)'; MSG: home_docbase - Property not found; ERRORCODE: ff; NEXT: null
155432 - The LDAPSync job appears to be querying older versions of the serverconfig object to get the ldap_config_id. If the older versions do not have a value set, the job will fail.
156347 - LDAP Sync job fail to remove a sub group when a sub group is deleted from AD.
157177 - LDAP Sync throws NullPointerException
157650 - com.documentum.fc.common.DfException constructor throws Exception:
java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: String index out of range: 90
157759 - LDAP Sync throws Exception [DM_GROUP_E_UNABLE_TO_SAVE_EXISTING]error: "Cannot save group geoda-grp because a user already exists with the same name"; ERRORCODE: 100; NEXT: null
158197 - LDAP job fail to create the users cabinet though the argument create_default_cabinet set to true.
158766 - Running LDAP Sync throws the following LDAP NamingException:
javax.naming.NamingException: [LDAP: error code 1 - 000020EF: SvcErr:DSID-020513B8, problem 5012 (DIR_ERROR), data 8333]; remaining name 'CN=GAU2876SPE,OU=Security Groups,OU=Groups,OU=USPTO,DC=prepro,DC=local'"; ERRORCODE: 100; NEXT: null
153709 - Request for LDAPSynch job to have a switch to ignore case when comparing usernames
162830 - Ldap Sync job removes users default_group attribute
162684 - LDAPSynch leaves trailing spaces when setting user attributes with mapped custom values
164164 - LDAPSynch fails with DM_LDAP_SYNC_E_EXCEPTION_ERROR "String index out of range: 32" on getTruncatedString adding a member to a group if the username has trailing blank spaces that exceed the 32-character length limit.

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