[Freeipa-devel] Community Portal Milestone

[Simo Sorce]

On Tue, 2015-06-09 at 16:15 -0400, Drew Erny wrote:
> Hey, Freeipa, same thread new subtopic.
> 
> So, I was bouncing some ideas around with another developer (ayoung) and 
> I think I have a pretty good idea for self-service user registration.
> 
> The idea is that I put self-service user registration into its own 
> application that calls out to ipa user-add after getting admin approval.
> 
> Workflow goes like this:
> 
> 1.) User goes to registration page, inputs details into form. 
> Registration page and application are not part of FreeIPA.
> 2.) User's registration goes into a non-FreeIPA database, something like 
> SQLite.
> 3.) Admin gets a notification email with a link to approve/deny 
> registration.
>      A.) Admin clicks approval link, registration application (which has 
> limited privileges) makes call out to ipa user-add command, adding the 
> new user to FreeIPA.
>      B.) Admin click deny link, user is not added.
> 4.) User's registration information, approved or denied, is deleted from 
> the external database.
> 
> This has a couple of advantages. For starters, it provides a layer of 
> protection against the creation of spam accounts. Accounts do not add 
> directly to LDAP (inserting to LDAP is a slow operation), instead sit in 
> intermediate area waiting approval. Second, we don't have to write a big 
> extension to ipa user-add or staginguser-add that allows anonymous 
> access to that command. Third, it can be bundled into its own package 
> and given to the community separate from FreeIPA proper. Finally, it 
> would allow me to gracefully defer becoming buried up to my neck in 
> D-Bus notifications and whatever other fanciness we want to send email, 
> because FreeIPA won't be sending the email.
> 
> Opinions?

You could avoid using an external database by using the new USer
Lifecycle management feature [1]. This will allow you to do a simple
ldapadd, but the user will not be enabled until an admin logs into the
FreeIPA interface to enable the user.
This manes your app never needs to see the admin's credentials or use
s4u2proxy and will pose a lower risk to the system.

Simo.

[1] http://www.freeipa.org/page/V4/User_Life-Cycle_Management


-- 
Simo Sorce * Red Hat, Inc * New York