Objective

We needed to add support for multiple authentication in Pentaho. Currently, there are several providers that can be used, like LDAP, hibernate and jdbc, but it's not possible to use several at the same time.


Pentaho doesn't allow for that out of the box, but it's simple enough, so we created a project to do just that, than you can find on github

This project allows for that by implementing a bean that will cycle through all the desired providers
 

Source code

This project is hosted at https://github.com/webdetails/bi-platform-engine-security-multipleuserrole

Also, please vote in this jira issue to get this in the main pentaho source

How to use

Following this steps should get you going:

Compile the project

Just run ant and you shuold be all set

Deploy the jar in Pentaho

Copy the resulting file to pentaho's lib dir, (eg: /opt/pentaho/server/webapps/pentaho/WEB-INF/lib/).

Copy the muiltiple provider spring config files to solution/system

Copy the following files from resources/ to pentaho-solutions/system/:

• applicationContext-pentaho-security-multiple.xml
• applicationContext-spring-security-multiple.xml

Change pentaho-spring-beans.xml to load the new files

Instead of loading one of the individual files (defaults to hibernate authentication), tell pentaho to instead load the new configuration files.
pentaho-spring-beans.xml should then look something like:

<beans>
<import resource="pentahosystemconfig.xml" />
<import resource="adminplugins.xml" />
<import resource="systemlisteners.xml" />
<import resource="sessionstartupactions.xml" />
<import resource="applicationcontext-spring-security.xml" />
<import resource="applicationcontext-common-authorization.xml" />
<import resource="applicationcontext-spring-security-multiple.xml" />
<import resource="applicationcontext-pentaho-security-multiple.xml" />
<import resource="pentahoobjects.spring.xml" />
</beans>

Note: This snippet is taken from pentaho 4.8, different versions may have files with different content

Change the list of providers in applicationContext-spring-security.xml

In applicationContext-spring-security.xml, look for a bean named authenticationManager, and add the providers you want. If you're using the sample file applicationContext-spring-security-multiple.xml, the 2 referenced beans are called daoAuthenticationProvider and daoAuthenticationProvider2. You're not limited to just 2 providers.

Edit applicationContext-spring-security-multiple.xml and applicationContext-pentaho-security-multiple.xml 

Edit applicationContext-spring-security-multiple.xml and applicationContext-pentaho-security-multiple.xml for your case.

This is the part where you configure the types of authentication you want. Even if it seems complicated at first, you'll notice that the 2 configuration files for multiple authentication are simply a concatenations of the individual files provided by pentaho, making sure the bean names don't colide.
On this example case we have hibernate and memory authentication joined together.

Launch the bi-server

Launch the BI server and hopefully you're all set.

Troubleshooting

Of course this won't work out of the box. Pay close attention to the logs. One of the most common errors is bean id collision, which is reported in the pentaho logs.
One other option is setting the spring logs to debug in log4j.xml

Questions / doubts

For any additional questions, feel free to get in touch: ctools at webdetails.pt