I have written a custom tomcat valve to parse HTTP headers and use them to authenticate. The valve works by extending AuthenticatorBase. I compiled it and placed it in $CATALINA_HOME/lib. Here is code:
public class TomcatLogin extends AuthenticatorBase {
private String[] roleNames = null;
private String ivcreds = null;
private String ivuser = null;
private String ivgroups = null;
private GenericPrincipal principal = null;
// Constructor defers to super class (Authenticator base)
public TomcatLogin(){
super();
}
protected boolean doAuthenticate(Request request, HttpServletResponse response)
{
List<String> groupsList = null;
System.out.println("Obtaining Headers from Request");
try {
ivuser = request.getHeader("iv-user");
ivcreds = request.getHeader("iv-creds");
ivgroups = request.getHeader("iv-groups");
} catch(Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
// Require all header credentials for proper authentication
if(ivuser == null || ivcreds == null || ivgroups == null)
return false;
// Split ivgroups by comma seporated value
// Then remove head and tail quotation marks
roleNames = ivgroups.split(",");
for(int i=0; i<roleNames.length; i++){
roleNames[i] = roleNames[i].substring(1, roleNames[i].length()-1 );
groupsList.add(roleNames[i]);
}
principal = new GenericPrincipal(ivuser, ivcreds, groupsList);
request.setUserPrincipal(principal);
return true;
}
public String getAuthMethod() {
return "HTTPAuthenticator";
}
}
I then tell Tomcat to use the valve in the server.xml. The documentation for extending AuthenticatorBase says When this class is utilized, the Context to which it is attached (or a parent Container in a hierarchy) must have an associated Realm that can be used for authenticating users and enumerating the roles to which they have been assigned. I thought I had configured it correctly, but it throws and error and Tomcat fails to start. Here is the server.xml config:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
...
<Server>
<Service name="Catalina">
<Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost">
<Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm">
<Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm"
resourceName="UserDatabase"/>
</Realm>
<!-- Here is my valve -->
<Valve className="package.of.my.custom.valve.TomcatLogin" />
<Host ... >
...
</Host>
</Engine>
</Service>
</Server>
And here is the Error message I am getting:
10-Jan-2019 10:11:03.576 SEVERE [main] org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.Digester.endElement End event threw exception
java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
... A bunch of useless stacktrace
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Configuration error: Must be attached to a Context at org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.setContainer(AuthenticatorBase.java:278)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.addValve(StandardPipeline.java:335)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addValve(ContainerBase.java:1133)
... 27 more
10-Jan-2019 10:11:03.579 WARNING [main] org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.load Catalina.start using conf/server.xml: Error at (107, 82) : Configuration error: Must be attached to a Context
10-Jan-2019 10:11:03.579 SEVERE [main] org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start Cannot start server. Server instance is not configured.
I think my valve is written correctly, so my guess is that the issue is in the configuration. Not sure why it is not getting a context to attach to. Any ideas?
Edit:
I tried putting the valve in my app's META-INF/context.xml (I had to make one since there wasn't one to begin with). Here it is:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Context>
<Valve className="package.of.my.custom.valve.TomcatLogin" />
</Context>
The server then start, but it fails to deploy any of the applications. I am getting similar error to an IBM valve which I originally tried to use over this custom implementation where it cannot find the AuthenticatorBase class from catalina.jar. Here are the SEVERE errors I am getting:
10-Jan-2019 15:34:06.673 SEVERE [main] org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal ContainerBase.addChild: start:
org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: Failed to start component [StandardEngine[Catalina].StandardHost[localhost].StandardContext[/sample-DB]]
...
Stacktrace info
...
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.handleSubClassException(LifecycleBase.java:441)
Caused by: java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
at org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.Digester.startDocument(Digester.java:1102)
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.nio.charset.Charset.put(Charset.java:538)
...
Stacktrace
...
10-Jan-2019 15:34:06.688 INFO [main] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWAR Deployment of web application archive [/fmac/deploy/sample.war] has finished in [11] ms
10-Jan-2019 15:34:06.689 INFO [main] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWAR Deploying web application archive [/fmac/deploy/sample-auth.war]
10-Jan-2019 15:34:06.692 SEVERE [main] org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.Digester.startElement Begin event threw error
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/catalina/authenticator/AuthenticatorBase
...
Stacktrace
The Error Below is the most confusing one. How can it not find this class?
...
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:381)
...
Stacktrace
...
10-Jan-2019 15:34:13.823 SEVERE [https-jsse-nio2-8443-exec-3] org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.service Error processing request
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class
org.apache.tomcat.util.buf.B2CConverter
at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.convertURI(CoyoteAdapter.java:1072)
