We were told by Westlaw that a restart was required to resolve a problem
we were having. While I didn't believe it this, doing so shouldn't cause
much harm so we did it. It didn't fix the Westlaw problem, but our Library
staff tell me that it appears to have fixed, or at least reduced the
frequency, of other problems (as yet unspecified) that they were seeing.
We are running Internet2's 1.3.X IdP. The UK federation metadata file
itself seems to be refreshing OK, and we have always run Tomcat with
'-Xmx1024M' and there are no unexplained messages in any of the logs. I
therefore don't _think_ we are suffering from any of the normal 'failed to
refresh metadata' problems but there is a vague suggestion that something
is failing.
Investigation continues.
Jon.
--
Jon Warbrick
Web/News Development, Computing Service, University of Cambridge
On Wed, 19 Aug 2009, Rod Widdowson wrote:
> Which version of Shib? Have you checked the error logs for other issues.
>
> In general Shib (all versions) will try to "limp on". So if loading the new
> metadata fails it will carry on with the old, but there should be some
> message in the logs to tell you that bad things are happening.
>
> Right now a common "meme" with 1.3.X IdPs is that it (or the metadata
> download itself) is running out of memory. I'm sure someone will tell me
> what the current recommendation is but I'd want to give it about 1Gb (if I
> had the Physical memory to back it). The latest versions of 2.x do not run
> out of memory, but they still have the "limp on" handling, so something else
> might be happening..
>
> Rod
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sharon Robinson"
> <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 9:14 AM
> Subject: Changes to supplier Shibboleth datafiles
>
>
> Hello,
>
> We've had a few examples recently (Westlaw, Sage, BMJ, OUP and Science
> Direct) where changes made by the supplier to their Shibboleth datafiles have
> resulted in our users being able to authenticate using Shibboleth. We have
> been advised that we need to refresh our metadata. However, the automatic
> overnight process and a manual update have proved ineffective and we have
> had to stop and start our Shibboleth server. Has anyone found a solution to
> this?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Sharon
>
> Sharon Robinson
> Electronic Resources Advisor
> Edinburgh Napier University
> Craiglockhart Campus
> Edinburgh EH14 1DJ
>
> e: [log in to unmask]
> t: 0131 455 4266
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