Authentication: LDAP server (Sync Plus)
Moodle core's auth_ldap authentication plugin is a great basis for authenticating users in Moodle. However, as Moodle core's auth_ldap is somehow limited in several aspects and there is no prospect to have it improved in Moodle core, we have implemented an extended version for LDAP authentication with these key features:
- The most important part: All functions from auth_ldap are still working if you use this authentication plugin.
- The plugin adds the possibility to the LDAP synchronization task to suspend users which have disappeared in LDAP for a configurable amount of days and delete them only after this grace period (the Moodle core LDAP synchronization task only provides you the option to suspend _or_ delete users which have disappeared in LDAP - MDL-47018).
- You can prevent the LDAP synchronization task from creating Moodle accounts for all LDAP users if they have never logged into Moodle before (the Moodle core LDAP synchronization task always creates Moodle accounts for all LDAP users - MDL-29249).
- You can fetch user details from LDAP on manual user creation (MDL-47029).
- It supports login via email for first-time LDAP logins (Moodle core only supports login via email for existing Moodle users - MDL-46638)
- It adds several line breaks to the output of the LDAP synchronization task to improve readability (MDL-30589).
Please see README file for details about the usage and features of this plugin.
No support in the comments section on this page
Please note that we don't provide any support for this plugin in the comments section on this page anymore.
We appreciate your commendation and reviews for this plugin in the comments. For bug reports and support requests, please read the extensive information in the plugin's README file first and create, if needed, a ticket in the bug tracker which is linked below.
Thanks for your cooperation.
Useful links
Screenshots
when adding the plugin, old users created with the standard LDAP plugin still require it to log-in, with new users being fetched from the LDAP repository are created with the new plugin. Is there any way to "move" users from one plugin to another? If not, then none of the plugins can be ever uninstalled without losing the log-in capabilities to users who where imported with that particular plugin.
In other words: if I disable the standard LDAP plugin, no user that was already in the system can log-in anymore. If I disable the "sync plus" plugin instead, no "new" users that logged in for the first time with this plug-in (higher priority in the authentication list) can log in to the system anymore.
Otherwise great plugin, looking forward to using it fully
I think all you need to know is listed on https://github.com/moodleuulm/moodle-auth_ldap_syncplus/blob/master/README.md, in the last paragraph of section "Usage & settings".
Thanks,
Alex
well, the features which auth_ldap_syncplus adds over auth_ldap are focused at user account lifecycle management. Adding a cohort sync feature would be out of the scope of this plugin.
With moodle_local_ldap, you mean https://github.com/patrickpollet/moodle_local_ldap ? Well, Patrick Pollet died some time ago as far as I know and that is a pretty good reason why the plugin is discontinued...
Please have a look at https://github.com/moodleuulm/moodle-local_profilecohort. This is a plugin which we have developed for a similar purpose and are already using it in production. It just needs some more features and will then be published shortly in the Moodle plugins repo.
Thanks,
Alex
citing our Moodle release support statement from https://github.com/moodleuulm/moodle-auth_ldap_syncplus/blob/master/README.md:
-----
Due to limited resources, block_people is only maintained for the most recent major release of Moodle. However, previous versions of this plugin which work in legacy major releases of Moodle are still available as-is without any further updates in the Moodle plugins repository.
There may be several weeks after a new major release of Moodle has been published until we can do a compatibility check and fix problems if necessary. If you encounter problems with a new major release of Moodle - or can confirm that auth_ldap_syncplus still works with a new major relase - please let us know on https://github.com/moodleuulm/moodle-auth_ldap_syncplus/issues
-----
Currently, we plan to work on 3.1 in July. But as far as I see, there are no fatal errors with the 3.0 version of this plugin on 3.1.
Thanks,
Alex
Moodle Ver. 3.1.1
LDAP Server Sync Plus Ver. v3.1-r1 2016071900
you have also written a private message to me. After your last message, I had the conclusion that the problem you decribed is done, that's why I won't answer on them. If there are any more problems, please come back to me.
Thanks,
Alex
Quick question. Does this plugin update custom fields during ldap_sync?
auth_ldap_syncplus is based on auth_ldap, thus it will sync whatever auth_ldap syncs.
In recent versions of Moodle, you can map custom profile fields to LDAP fields, this is done on /admin/auth_config.php?auth=ldap_syncplus. With this feature, you can fill custom profile fields on user creation and on login.
Unfortunately, this does not work for the scheduled LDAP sync task. There is a ticket on https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-40613 for Moodle core which is somehow stuck and we didn't have the time to contribute resources for solving this ticket.
Summing up:
* Yes you can map custom profile fields
* This is a feature of Moodle core, not of our plugin
* You can't fully rely that the values in the custom profile fields are up to date for all users as they are only updated on login and not with the (nightly) LDAP sync task.
Hope this helps.
Alex
This is an interesting plugin. My question is: Can this plugin exist next to the standard LDAP plugin, so that a site basically has two LDAP authentication instances which authenticate users from two different active directories?
I have never built a setup like this before myself, but theoretically it should work without problems.
Thanks,
Alex
we will need some more weeks until we can do 3.3 testing due to our delayed internal scheduled.
However, up to now, we haven't received any problem reports with the 3.2 version on 3.3. Please give it a try.
Thanks,
Alex
Just wanted to report that the 3.3 plugin released earlier today (what a coincidence!) installed fine to my 3.4.1, and seemed to successfully sync/create users in Moodle from cron.
Thank you for all your work on this!