Assigning users and groups to roles

There are two choices you have when assigning roles: WebSphere Application Server authorization, which uses the Security role to user/group mapping panel of the administrative console or the system authorization facility (SAF) for role-based authorization, which uses SAF authorization for J2EE roles. This topic describes using the Security role to user/group mapping panel of the administrative console (WebSphere Application Server authorization for J2EE roles) to assign users and groups to roles. Before you perform this task:

• Secure the Web applications and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) applications where new roles are created and assigned to Web and enterprise bean resources.

• Create all the roles in your application.

• Verify that you have properly configured the user registry that contains the users that you want to assign. It is preferable to have security turned on with the user registry of your choice before beginning this process.

• Verify if you change anything in the security configuration you save the configuration and restart the server before the changes become effective. For example, enable security or change the user registry.

Overview

These steps are common for both installing an application and modifying an existing application. If the application contains roles, you see the Security role to user/group mapping link during application installation and also during application management, as a link in the Additional properties section.

Procedure

1. Access the administrative console.

   Type http://server_name:port_number/ibm/console in a Web browser.

2. Click Applications > Enterprise applications > application_name .

3. Under Detail properties, click Security role to user/group mapping. A list of all the roles that belong to this application is displayed. If the roles already have users or All Authentication or Everyone special subjects assigned, they display here.

4. To assign the special subjects, select either the Everyone or the All Authenticated option for the appropriate roles.

5. To assign users or groups, select the role. You can select multiple roles at the same time, if the same users or groups are assigned to all the roles.

6. Click Look up users or Look up groups.

7. Get the appropriate users and groups from the user registry by completing the Limit and the Search string fields and by clicking Search. The Limit field limits the number of users that are obtained and displayed from the user registry. The pattern is a searchable pattern matching one or more users and groups. For example, user* lists users like user1, user2. A pattern of asterisk (*) indicates all users or groups.

   Use the limit and the search strings cautiously so as not to overwhelm the user registry. When you use large user registries such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) where information on thousands of users and groups resides, a search for a large number of users or groups can make the system slow and can make it fail. When more entries exist than requests for entries, a message displays on top of the panel. You can refine your search until you have the required list.

8. Select the users and groups to include as members of these roles from the Available field and click >> to add them to the roles.

9. To remove existing users and groups, select them from the Selected field and click <<. When removing existing users and groups from roles, use caution if those same roles are used as RunAs roles.

   For example, if the user1 user is assigned to the role1 RunAs role and you try to remove the user1 user from the role1 role, the administrative console validation does not delete the user. A user can only be part of a RunAs role if the user is already in a role either directly or indirectly through a group. In this case, the user1 user is in the role1 role. For more information on the validation checks that are performed between RunAs role mapping and user and group mapping to roles, see Assigning users to RunAs roles.

10. Click OK. If any validation problems exist between the role assignments and the RunAs role assignments, the changes are not committed and an error message that indicates the problem displays at the top of the panel. If a problem exists, make sure that the user in the RunAs role is also a member of the regular role. If the regular role contains a group that contains the user in the RunAs role, make sure that the group is assigned to the role using the administrative console. Follow steps 4 and 5. Avoid using the Application Server Toolkit or any other manual process where the complete name of the group, host name, group name, or distinguished name (DN) is not used.

Results

What to do next

Note: Depending upon how your active user registry is configured, the search results of security user or group role mappings are displayed in different formats. With federated repository, LDAP, file-based and custom registries can be used. WebSphere Application Server can uniquely identify users from various registries by the user names listed in the table. Attention: In a distributed environment, when you install WebSphere Application Server with samples, enable security using federated repositories, and start the server1 server with sample applications, the server might create exceptions. However, the server starts successfully. The deployment manager did not create user and group samples when it created the deployment manager profile. To resolve exceptions caused by the samples failing to load, create your own sample users and groups. In the administrative console, do the following:

1. Click Users and Groups > Manage Users.

2. Create the samples user and the sampadmn group. The samples user is a member of the sampadmn group.

For more assistance, refer to the "Managing users" help topic by clicking More information about this page at the top right of the Manage Users panel.

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