Common Discovery Service Errors

The following errors are commonly encountered by users, usually when initially setting up their DS.

java.net.UnknownHostException

This error is most usually caused by a malformed URL. This in turn is usually caused by an invalid specification of a file name in a <MetadataProvider> element.

Couldn't find endpoint URL in metadata

The IdP Discovery Specification requires that the return address that the SP sends to the Discovery Service be in the metadata. This is an example

<DiscoveryResponse
  xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:profiles:SSO:idp-discovery-protocol"
  Binding="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:profiles:SSO:idp-discovery-protocol"
  Location="https://host.domain/Shibboleth.sso/DS"
  index="1"/>

Note that the Discovery service needs to have access to the metadata for the SP that it discovering for as well as the metadata for all the IdPs.

edu.internet2.middleware.shibboleth.wayf.plugins.provider.BindingFilter: badly formatted binding

This error is usually provoked by including metadata from SPs on which SSPCPP-167 has not been fixed. The failing metadata will contain a discovery response like this:

<DiscoveryResponse
  xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:profiles:SSO:idp-discovery-protocol"
  Location="https://host.domain/Shibboleth.sso/DS"
  index="1"/>

Rather than as specified in the previous section

This will cause the metadata for that SP to be supressed unless warnOnBadBinding is set to TRUE in the configuration.