LDAP Sync & Login

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WARNING ABOUT USERNAMES & SYNCING

Snipe-IT considers the username of a user to be the unique identifier when syncing with LDAP/AD.

If you manually created some users, or imported them via CSV, using a non-email address style username, you are likely to create duplicate users when you subsequently sync with AD, Okta, Azure, etc.

Make sure you confirm what the username style is in the directory service you are syncing with BEFORE actually syncing for the first time.

For example, if your manually created or CSV imported usernames look like jane.smith (with an email value of [email protected]), you should confirm that the directory service you're syncing to uses jane.smith as a username value, OR update the usernames of your users to be consistent with what the directory service will use.

jane.smith is not the same as [email protected], so you'll end up with duplicate users, one for jane.smith and one for [email protected].

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TAKE A BACKUP

Whenever you're touching data directly via MySQL, you should ALWAYS take a backup FIRST.

If you've already created your users manually or via CSV import, you can update a plain username to an email address using the following mysql command:

SQL

UPDATE users SET username = CONCAT(username,'@yourdomain.com') WHERE username NOT LIKE '%@%' AND deleted_at IS NULL;

This will look through the users table for any non-deleted records with username fields with a value that is missing an @ symbol, and then modify that record to be [email protected].

If you just want to copy user email addresses into their username field, thus changing their login username to be their email address, you can run the following:

Text

UPDATE `users` SET `username` = `email` where email!='';

You should make sure that all of your email addresses are unique before running this command.

Rebranding

If you need to change the email address domain for your usernames and email addresses, for example after a rebrand or if your company got acquired, you could run this:

SQL

UPDATE `users` SET `email` = REPLACE(email, '@old-domain.com', '@new-domain.com') WHERE `email` LIKE '[e-mail]';
UPDATE `users` SET `username` = `email` where email!='';

Changing Email Format

If you need to convert your email addresses (and/or usernames) to a [email protected] format, you can run:

SQL

UPDATE `users` SET `email` = lower(CONCAT(first_name, '.', last_name,'@yourdomain.com')) WHERE `last_name`!='';
UPDATE `users` SET `username` = `email` where email!='';

Checking for Duplicates

To check for duplicate usernames for users that have not been soft-deleted:

SQL

SELECT id, username, email, first_name, last_name, COUNT(*) FROM users WHERE deleted_at IS NULL GROUP BY email HAVING COUNT(*) > 1;

To return a count of duplicates for all rows for users that have not been soft-deleted:

SQL

SELECT id, username, email, first_name, last_name, COUNT(*) FROM users WHERE deleted_at IS NULL GROUP BY username;

This will return all usernames with the number of duplicates for each one.

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You must have the php-ldap extension installed for LDAP integration to work

The LDAP functionality will import any users in your LDAP/Active Directory using the LDAP sync (in People > LDAP), and will update existing users. It will also allow users to use their LDAP credentials to login to Snipe-IT.

To set up your Snipe-IT installation to be able to use LDAP for user login and import, go to Admin > Settings and scroll down to the LDAP settings sections.

We never, ever write anything to your LDAP server, and a read-only administrator account can be used for these settings.

LDAP Login Overview

When you have LDAP enabled and a user tries to login, it will first query your LDAP server with their credentials. If they authenticate successfully with your LDAP server, their local user record will be updated and they will be logged in.

If the user does not authenticate successfully against your LDAP server, their local user is NOT updated, and the system falls back to trying to authenticate them as a local (non-LDAP) account.

Configuration

Some settings are only used during LDAP Sync, some are only used during LDAP Login, and some settings are used for both. Check the "Used For" column to determine which settings are used for which.

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Warning:

All LDAP attribute values except "LDAP Authentication Query" MUST be entered in all lowercase.

Option	Example	Notes	Required	Used For
LDAP Server	ldap://ldap.example.com	The URL of the LDAP server, beginning with ldap:// or ldaps://	Yes	All
LDAP Password Sync	unchecked	If the user has succesfully authenticated before, and the LDAP server is down, this will enable the user to continue to log in.	No	Login
LDAP Permissions Group	No Default Group	The Permissions Group you want to assign to newly-created users	No	All
Active Directory Domain	ad.yourdomain.com	The domain to authenticate your AD against. This is often your company email domain, but not always. We concatenate this with your user's username to execute the authentication, so if your user was janedoe, and your AD domain was mysite.com, we create the User Principal Name by combining them. This is only needed for AD (not LDAP) connections.	No	Login
Client-Side TLS key		Almost always only used for Google Secure LDAP (GSuite)	No	Sync
Client-Side TLS Certificate		Almost always only used for Google Secure LDAP (GSuite)	No	Sync
Use TLS	unchecked	If your LDAP server supports the STARTTLS extension to encrypt a normally-unencrypted connection, check this. Usually it's just better to use ldaps:// but if you can't do that for some reason, this is a reasonable fallback	No	All
Use SSL certificate validation	Checked - "Allow invalid SSL certificate"	If you use a directory server that does not have a public verifiable TLS certificate, then you should check this box. This is true for most Active Directory servers.	No	All
LDAP Bind Username	cn=read-only-admin,dc=example,dc=com	Admin username to use to connect to LDAP to search the OU for LDAP import.	Yes	Sync
LDAP Bind Password	password	Password to use when authenticating to LDAP	Yes	Sync
Base Bind DN	dc=example,dc=com	The base where the search for users will be executed.	Yes	All
LDAP Filter	&(cn=*)	The search filter for the LDAP query. For AD filter enabled users using: &(sAMAccountType=805306368)(!(userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2)) This should EXCLUDE the final enclosing parentheses. For example, &(cn=*), NOT (&(cn=*)).	Yes	Sync
Username Field	uid	The name of the field in your LDAP that you want to use for Snipe-IT username. AD: usually samaccountname LDAP: usually uid	Yes	All
Last Name	sn	The name of the field in your LDAP to use for last name. This is often sn (for surname).	Yes	All
LDAP First Name	cn	The name of the field in your LDAP to use for first name. AD: Usually givenname LDAP: Usually cn	Yes	All
LDAP Authentication query	uid=	The LDAP query we should use to search your LDAP users. THIS IS THE ONLY FIELD THAT SHOULD BE MIXED CASE! AD: Usually sAMAccountName=	Yes	Login
LDAP Version	3	Version of LDAP. This is usually going to be 3	Yes	All
LDAP Active Flag	active	Optional flag for disabled user accounts. WARNING: if this flag is set, and doesn't exist in your directory, users will not be able to log in!	No	Sync
LDAP Employee Number	emp_no	Only necessary if you use a field in LDAP to store an employee number. Can otherwise be left blank.	No	All
LDAP Department	department	LDAP field that should map to Departments in Snipe-IT. If the Department in Snipe-IT doesn't exist, it will be created	No	All
LDAP Email	mail	LDAP field that should map to an email address for the user.	No	All

For an extensive list of Active Directory filters that can help you narrow down the users you sync, check out the documentation on Microsoft's website.

Once your settings are entered, make sure you check the LDAP Integration checkbox to enable LDAP authentication.

Testing LDAP Settings

In Snipe-IT v4.0.10 and higher, there is an easier way to determine if your LDAP settings are correct.

Once you have entered your LDAP settings (in Admin > LDAP/AD), and you have checked the "Enable LDAP" checkbox and saved your settings, you will see two LDAP test buttons at the bottom of your LDAP Settings page.

(Click on the images below for a larger, animated demonstration if they do not play automatically.)

The first checks to make sure your LDAP binding and OU is correct, and we can search your directory. This is necessary for syncing your users via the LDAP Sync utility.

The second LDAP test button attempts to actually authenticate with your LDAP server as if you were one of your users logging in, so you will need to provide a valid username and password for an LDAP user account that has permission to bind to your LDAP server. This user does not need to have searching/indexing capabilities.

Using Active Directory

If your LDAP server is an Active Directory server, make sure you check the AD checkbox on your LDAP Settings page (Admin > LDAP/AD), and add an Active Directory Domain to your settings.

Snipe-IT will first check to see if you've set your LDAP server as an AD server, and will then try to use whatever AD Domain you've specified. If you don't add an AD Domain, it will try to guess the user's distinguished name using the email domain you set in your settings.

In the code, that looks like this:

PHP

if ($settings->is_ad =='1') {
	
    // Check if they are using the userprincipalname for the username field.
    // If they are, we can skip building the UPN to authenticate against AD
    if ($ldap_username_field=='userprincipalname') {
        $userDn = $username;
    } else {
        // In case they haven't added an AD domain
        if ($settings->ad_domain == '') {
            $userDn      = $username.'@'.$settings->email_domain;
        } else {
            $userDn      = $username.'@'.$settings->ad_domain;
        }
    }

} else {
    $userDn      = $ldap_username_field.'='.$username.','.$settings->ldap_basedn;
}

LDAP Command Line Sync

LDAP syncing is available via the GUI and also available via the LDAP Sync command line tool.

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For Hosted Snipe-IT Customers

If you need to set up an LDAP sync cron job on the hosted platform, just shoot us an email at [email protected] and we'll get you sorted. :)