Admin Users Remote LDAP + role groups

BIGIP LTM version: 11.1

 

LDAP flavor: OpenLDAP, OpenDS, etc (not Active Directory)

 

Admin section: System > Users

 

 

The Remote - LDAP authentication method's remote role group feature is focused around user attributes, and does not implement a group model (e.g., to check an LDAP group's list of uniqueMembers). When someone logs in, BIGIP uses a LDAP query that returns ALL ('*') standard attributes on that user. Operational attributes are not retrieved unless specifically requested (this is default LDAP behavior).

 

 

isMemberOf is a popular operational attribute that is automatically set on a user when the user is added as a uniqueMember of an LDAP group. This is hugely useful when applications only implement a user attribute-based query, like BIGIP. It automatically and easily exposes a group model via the user. Active Directory does this, but through a standard attribute. The LDAP standard, however, is to expose these kinds of dynamically-generated values as operational attributes (which makes a lot of sense).

 

 

I want to manage my users as group members, and be able to use that membership in BIGIP's admin interface for role assignment. Without a group model, I am restricted to user attributes.

 

That's fine, except I can't specify which attributes I want to retrieve. This means that operational attributes like isMemberOf are not usable by BIGIP to determine remote role groups membership.

 

 

I can see three solutions in order to make LDAP group models instantly useful for BIGIP remote roles, and I'm curious if anyone has any other ideas:

 

 

1) f5: allow me to specify the attributes (in addition to any required attributes like cn, uid, etc.) that I want retrieved instead of the default ALL '*' query

 

 

2) f5: modify the default ALL query to ask for standard and operational attributes (an ldapsearch format would be: '*' '+'); or allow me to toggle "retrieve operational attributes" on/off, which would add the '+' signifier to the query

 

 

3) me: implement a redundant user attribute synchronization model on my LDAP to replicate isMemberOf to a standard attribute like memberOf.