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Setting Up The Environment

Installing Shibboleth on Ubuntu is not as easy as installing it on a supported operating system, such as CentOS. However, it is still possible. This guide is using a clean installation of Ubuntu 16.04.7.

You should first check that your repositories are up to date by running the following command.

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sudo apt update

You also need to have the web server you are going to use installed before you install Shibboleth. This is because the Shibboleth installation automatically detects what web server, and version, you are running. It then uses this information to compile a module you can attach to the webserver to integrate the Service Provider with the webserver.

For this example we are using Apache v2.4.18 This software is available from Ubuntu's package manager. To install it run:

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sudo apt install apache2 -y

Note: the -y modifier simple skips you having to confirm the installation

Now, I mentioned earlier that when Shibboleth is installed it will compile an Apache module to connect the two. To do this however you need the developer files for Apache to be installed as well. Not just the commercial version of Apache (the instruction we've just run). To install the dev files:

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sudo apt install apache2-dev -y

Apache is now installed. We can now carry on with the installation of Shibboleth. But first I will install a few things to make my life a little easier. I will need to configure Apache and Shibboleth once they are fully installed. I will use VIM to do this as it is a powerful inside-terminal text editor. To install VIM run:

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sudo apt install vim -y

Because I am building Shibboleth, and its dependencies from source, I will need to download the software from an online source. This is because they are not available within Ubuntu's default repositories (and therefore cannot be installed using an apt install command). To make downloading these files easier I will install Curl. Curl is a piece of software that allows you to easily download a file using the command line, as long as you have the URL to where the file can be downloaded from.

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sudo apt install curl -y

Your environment is now adequately setup to start the installation of Shibboleth, but first, you must install its depedencies.