Propagating security policy of installed applications to a JACC provider using wsadmin scripting

It is possible that you have applications installed prior to enabling the Java™ Authorization Contract for Containers (JACC)-based authorization. You can start with default authorization and then move to an external provider-based authorization using JACC later.

Before you begin

Best practice: Use the wsadmin tool to propagate information to the JACC provider independent of the application installation process, avoiding the need to reinstall applications. Also, during application installation or modification you might have had problems propagating the security policy information to the JACC provider. For example, network problems might occur, the JACC provider might not be available, and so on. For these cases, the security policy of the previously installed applications does not exist in the JACC provider to make the access decisions. One choice is to reinstall the applications involved. However, you can avoid reinstalling by using the wsadmin scripting tool. Use this tool to propagate information to the JACC provider independent of the application installation process. The tool eliminates the need for reinstalling the applications.

The tool uses the SecurityAdmin MBean to propagate the policy information in the deployment descriptor of any installed application to the JACC provider. You can invoke this tool using wsadmin at the base application server for base and deployment manager level for WebSphere® Application Server Network Deployment. Note that the SecurityAdmin MBean is available only when the server is running.

Use propagatePolicyToJACCProvider{-appNames appNames} to propagate the policy information in the deployment descriptor or annotations of the enterprise archive (EAR) files to the JACC provider. If the RoleConfigurationFactory and the RoleConfiguration interfaces are implemented by the JACC provider, the authorization table information in the binding file of the EAR files is also propagated to the provider. See the Interfaces that support JACC article for more information about these interfaces.

The appNames String contains the list of application names, delimited by a colon (:), whose policy information must be stored in the provider. If appNames is not present, the policy information of all the deployed applications is propagated to the provider.

Also, be aware of the following items:
  • Before migrating applications to the Tivoli® Access Manager JACC provider, create or import the users and groups that are in the applications to Tivoli Access Manager.
  • Depending on the application or the number of applications that are propagated, you might have to increase the request time-out period either in the soap.client.props file in the directory profile_root/properties (if using SOAP) or in the sas.client.props file (if using RMI) for the command to complete. You can set the request time-out value to 0 to avoid the timeout problem, and change it back to the original value after the command is run.

Procedure

  1. Configure your JACC provider in WebSphere Application Server.

    See the Authorizing access to J2EE resources using Tivoli Access Manager article for more information.

  2. Restart the server.
  3. Enter the following commands: 
    wsadmin>$AdminTask propagatePolicyToJACCProvider {-appNames appNames}