Preparing Jetty 7 for the Shibboleth Identity Provider

Within this document the macro IDP_SRC will be used to refer to the location of the expand IdP distribution directory. The macro IDP_HOME will be used to refer to IdP installation directory (as given during the installation process). The macro JETTY_HOME will be used to refer to the location of the Jetty installation directory.

Version Requirements

Jetty 7.3.1+
Java 6 or later

Required Configuration Changes

Jetty listens on ports 8080 and 8443 for user-facing web traffic by default. You will most likely need to modify these ports to 80 and 443 in the jetty.xml and jetty-ssl.xml config files, and make arrangements for Jetty to run as root, or utilize a setuid extension to support the privileged ports.
Add the following Java options to your start.ini(all ### is the amount of memory in megabytes to allow for the option):
- -XX:+UseG1GC - this enables a garbage collector that reduces the memory requirements needed for larger metadata files
- -Xmx1500m - this is the maximum amount of memory that Jetty may use, at least 1.5G is recommended for larger (>25M) metadata files
- -XX:MaxPermSize=128m - (Oracle Java 6/7 specific option) the maximum amount of memory allowed for the permanent generation object space
- -Djava.endorsed.dirs=lib/endorsed - tells Jetty where the endorsed libraries are
Uncomment --exec
Uncomment etc/jetty-ssl.xml at the bottom of start.ini

Recommended Configuration Changes

Jetty will use /tmp as a staging area for unpacking the warfile, and if you have cron jobs sweeping that for old files, your IdP can be disrupted. You will probably want to create a tmp directory under Jetty itself, and set -Djava.io.tmpdir=tmp in your start.ini
The Jetty distribution ships with a number of example applications located in the JETTY_HOME/webapps directory and deployment descriptors located in JETTY_HOME/contexts. You should remove all of these unless you are specifically using them.

Supporting SOAP Endpoints

Most new deployments without legacy needs will not need to support back-channel SOAP communication. The most common case requiring this feature is support for legacy Shibboleth SPs using SAML 1.1 that perform attribute queries using SOAP.

If you do need this support, these connections require special security properties which are not appropriate for user-facing/browser use. Therefore an additional endpoint must be configured.

Copy the jetty7-dta-ssl-2.0.0.jar (asc) to JETTY_HOME/lib/ext.

Create the file JETTY_HOME/etc/jetty-shibboleth.xml and place the following content in it:

<Configure id="Server" class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.Server">
  <Call name="addConnector">
    <Arg>
      <New class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.ssl.SslSelectChannelConnector">
         <Arg>
           <New class="net.shibboleth.utilities.jetty7.DelegateToApplicationSslContextFactory">
             <Set name="keyStore">IDP_HOME/credentials/idp.jks</Set>
             <Set name="keyStorePassword">PASSWORD</Set>
           </New>
          </Arg>
        <Set name="port">8443</Set>
        <Set name="maxIdleTime">30000</Set>
      </New>
    </Arg>
  </Call>
</Configure>

Replace IDP_HOME with the IdP home directory entered during installation.
Replace PASSWORD with the password for the IdP key entered during installation.
Add etc/jetty-shibboleth.xml to your Jetty start.ini file (toward the bottom of the file you should see other configuration files listed).

Deploying the IdP

In order to deploy the IdP Jetty must be informed of the location of the IdP war. This can be done by:

Create the file JETTY_HOME/contexts/idp.xmland place the following content in it (replacing IDP_HOME with your IdP's home directory):

<Configure class="org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext">
  <Set name="war">IDP_HOME/war/idp.war</Set>
  <Set name="contextPath">/idp</Set>
  <Set name="extractWAR">false</Set>
  <Set name="copyWebDir">false</Set>
  <Set name="copyWebInf">true</Set>
</Configure>