Installation

Moodle 2.3, Shibboleth and Apache 2.2

Moodle 2.3, Shibboleth and Apache 2.2

by Björn Bergstrand -
Number of replies: 0
I've had some trouble getting Shibboleth, moodle and webwork all work together on a single server and thought i'd describe here how I resolved it, in case someone else has the same problem.

We're running Ubuntu 12.04, and use webwork 2.5.0 apache2 (2.2.22), libapache2-mod-shib2 (2.4.3).
Now, simply enabling the shib2-module the ubuntu way (a2enmod shib2) together with webwork will crash apache during startup. Looking at the in the logs reveals:

[Mon May 27 14:30:03 2013] [info] Init: Seeding PRNG with 656 bytes of entropy
[Mon May 27 14:30:03 2013] [info] Init: Generating temporary RSA private keys (512/1024 bits)
[Mon May 27 14:30:03 2013] [info] Init: Generating temporary DH parameters (512/1024 bits)

and then nothing.

Apache will start normally with webwork removed and then the log reads:

[Mon May 27 14:30:03 2013] [info] Init: Seeding PRNG with 656 bytes of entropy
[Mon May 27 14:30:03 2013] [info] Init: Generating temporary RSA private keys (512/1024 bits)
[Mon May 27 14:30:03 2013] [info] Init: Generating temporary DH parameters (512/1024 bits)
[Mon May 27 14:30:03 2013] [debug] ssl_scache_shmcb.c(253): shmcb_init allocated 512000 bytes of shared memory
[Mon May 27 14:30:03 2013] [debug] ssl_scache_shmcb.c(272): for 511920 bytes (512000 including header), recommending 32 subcaches, 133 indexes each
.... etc.

In the end I got apache to load both shibboleth and webwork by, instead of loading the shib2-module in mods-enabled-directory (which is what a2enmod does), loading it directly in the apache2.conf right before the
<IfModule mpm_prefork_module> directive.

I.e. it now reads

....
LoadModule mod_shib /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_shib_22.so
<IfModule mpm_prefork_module>
...
</IfModule>
...


Needless to say, this is hardly satisfying. If anyone can give any clues to why this might be happening i'd be terribly happy and grateful!