Ubuntu packages for the Shibboleth Service Provider available again

Good news for all users of the Shibboleth Service Provider (SP) under the Linux operating system distribution Ubuntu: Thanks to the Staatsinstitut für Schulqualität und Bildungsforschung (State Institute for School Quality and Educational Research – ISB), DAASI International can now provide up-to-date Ubuntu packages for the Shibboleth SP.

With the Shibboleth SP, applications can be easily integrated into federations. Users can use third-party applications via authentication with the login of their home organisation. They also benefit from single sign-on (SSO): After logging in once in the morning, they remain logged in to all connected applications throughout the day. This is made possible by the complex SAML protocol, which is encapsulated by the SP: Instead of the application having to implement SAML itself, it receives the relevant data – such as user name or authorisation attributes – directly from the SP via simple variables

Until January 2023, this important service was provided by SWITCH, the Swiss research network, which regularly created packages for the Shibboleth SP on Ubuntu. After this service was discontinued, many institutions that use the SP under Ubuntu were faced with the threat of considerable additional work for their own packaging and maintenance. This posed a particular challenge for educational institutions, universities and research organisations, as a continuous and secure authentication solution is required to access digital services.

Sustainable solution through new infrastructure

In order to close this gap and continue providing the packages, the ISB has launched a corresponding project, as part of which DAASI International has set up an extensive DevOps infrastructure in recent months. This will make it possible to continuously provide up-to-date packages for new versions of the Shibboleth SP for Ubuntu in the future.

The first packages have now been successfully created. This means that current Ubuntu packages for the Shibboleth SP can now be obtained under https://daasi.de/en/ubuntu-packages-shibboleth-sp/. This ensures that administrators can continue to operate their applications with a secure and powerful authentication environment under Ubuntu without having to create and maintain their own packages

Future updates and improvements are already being planned to ensure long-term support and further development.