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Windows Installation

The native Shibboleth SP is available for Windows with modules for all the supported web servers. There is an installer available for supported Windows versions:

Windows 2008 Server
Windows 2012 Server
Windows 2016 Server

The following older versions are no longer supported by Microsoft and therefore are not officially supported by the project, but may still be usable. Be aware that they are no longer tested routinely and future Shibboleth versions may stop working on them at any time (and in fact it's all but certain to happen on the next upgrade due to Microsoft compiler changes):

Windows XP SP2 and Later
Windows 2003 Server SP1 and Later

Earlier Windows and Service Pack versions are not usable as of V2.4. Since earlier versions of the SP are no longer safe to use due to security issues, we do not recommend using them to obtain compatibility with older Windows versions.

The installer does not work fully in conjunction with the IIS "Shared Configuration" option available on newer releases of IIS. Disable it prior to installation. After re-enabling it, you will likely have to manually apply some of the configuration changes; refer to the appropriate topic below.

As of V2.5, the Windows installation has been revamped significantly to support enhanced operation and ease of patching and upgrades:

You may now install the SP to any location you wish, rather than being forced to use C:\opt\shibboleth-sp (though this is still recommended for consistency).
Most shared components are now installed to Program Files\Shibboleth and ProgramData\Shibboleth. Most files deployers are familiar with remain in the same relative locations, so these changes should be mostly invisible to you.
The 64-bit install now contains both 32-bit and 64-bit binaries and you can switch architectures after installation (but not run both at the same time). When using a 64-bit OS, you MUST use the 64-bit installer now; the 32-bit installer will refuse to run to ensure this.

The Windows installer now actually contains a fourth version field that indicates the patch level within a particular SP release. Initially 0, it will be incremented if patches to software included with but not part of the SP need to be updated (e.g., OpenSSL). Subsequent patch level installers will upgrade older versions.

Note that as with older releases, if you want the installer to attempt IIS configuration for you when using IIS 7.x, the IIS 6 management compatibility feature must be installed.

Install for IIS 5
Install for IIS 6
Install for IIS 7 (this also applies to IIS 8 for now)
Install for Apache

Upgrades From 2.x Releases

It's also possible (though not simple) to build the SP and its dependencies from source using Visual Studio, but this should only be attempted by experienced Windows developers.

Build from Source

Shibboleth Service

Once installation is complete, you'll need to run the Shibboleth daemon, shibd, at all times. shibd is a console application that is usually installed as a Windows service.

To run the process in console mode for testing or to diagnose major problems, supply a -console parameter when running it.
If shibd won't start, use the -check option from the command line to echo most logging information to the console for debugging.

Other parameters can be used to install (or remove) shibd from the service database and subsequent control is generally via the Service Control Manager applet.

Newer versions of Windows support automatic restart of failed services. We suggest using this feature to restart shibd when it fails. Although stability is good, maximum reliability will be achieved by monitoring the process.

Failure to Install

The most common reason for the installation failing is that the Shibboleth service (above) does not start correctly. In order to debug (versions 2.5.1 onwards) this you can instruct the installer to not try to start the service by specifying that the ALWAYS_START_SERVICE property contain the value FALSE. Do this from the command line:

c:\> msiexec /i Installer.msi ALWAYS_START_SERVICE=FALSE

You can then use the -check option described above to debug why the service will not start. Once this is completed you can start the service manually.

c:\> sc start shibd_default