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SSP v2.4.2 General Release Announcement

Info

SSP v2.4.2 to be released in mid- August 20, 2014

Release Highlights

  • 2.4.2 is a patch release to address bugs identified in the 2.4.0 and 2.4.1 releases.  
  • Fix for potential loss of courses on a MAP Plan when editing a Plan (this patch alone is very strong justification to upgrade to 2.4.2)
  • Minor fixes for the Action Plan tool
  • Corrected inaccurate Student Searches involved DOBFix for potential loss of courses on a MAP Plan when editing a Plabinvolving DOB
  • Eliminated duplicate search server round trips
  • Workaround for corrupted Maven dependency downloads
  • Fix for security vulnerabilities in SSP-Platform deployments using CAS (no such deployments known at this writing)

Info

The are no external database schema changes in this release.

Fresh Installation Instructions

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Warning

For all existing installations the published Release notes should be reviewed. 

  • To upgrade from 2.0.X follow the upgrade instructions for 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4.0 and 2.4.1 Release Notes before deploying the 2.4.2
  • To upgrade from 2.1.X follow the upgrade instructions for the 2.2, 2.3, 2.4.0 and 2.4.1   Release Notes before deploying the 2.4.2
  • To upgrade from 2.2.X follow the upgrade instructions for the 2.3, 2.4.0 and 2.4.1  Release Notes before deploying the 2.4.2 code

It is critical to complete the steps described in the 2.4.0 release notes for any deployment not upgrading directly from 2.4.1 to 2.4.2

 

SSP-2721 is a patch for implementers who integrate SSP with CAS for security authentication and authorization.  Details of the changes The SSP development team is not aware of any SSP deployments integrated with CAS, but this release includes two security-related patch sets specifically targeted at CAS integrations:

  • SSP-2721 - Scrubs certain CAS-specific request parameters. The changes and effects are detailed in the uPortal project.  No work should be required to enable the patch, but you may want to review that document to better understand the CAS-related configuration changes included in this release.
  • SSP-2724 - Works around what amounts to a CAS-specific session hijacking vulnerability. The changes and effects are detailed in
the uPortal project.  

 

  • the uPortal project and the <platform-src>/uportal-war/src/main/resources/properties/security.properties file includes greatly expanded comments describing recommended configuration changes. You will likely want to review the email thread and changes to that file whether or not you use CAS. The new defaults may interfere with your existing authentication provider integrations, especially AD/LDAP. SSP-specific details below.

Review security.properties Changes

This release includes a large patch to <platform-src>/uportal-war/src/main/resources/properties/security.properties for SSP-2724. These changes may result in merge conflicts, especially if you are already integrated with other authentication providers, e.g. AD/LDAP. For resolving merge conflicts in general, see SSP Source Code Upgrade Process. For this particular patch, understand that the primary goal was to change this:

No Format
principalToken.root=userName
credentialToken.root=password

To this:

No Format
principalToken.root=
credentialToken.root=

Once you're able to sort out the conflict so everything is as it was before, but with expanded comments and the unset of the "root" token config as shown above, you'll need to make sure your existing authentication provider configuration still works. In almost all SSP deployments this entails creating a token config pair for each configured LDAP security context. I.e. for every row in security.properties of the form:

No Format
root.<suffix>=org.jasig.portal.security.provider.SimpleLdapSecurityContextFactory

You will need a corresponding:

No Format
principalToken.root.<suffix>=userName
credentialToken.root.<suffix>=password

For example, if your configuration currently includes:

No Format
root.ldap_student=org.jasig.portal.security.provider.SimpleLdapSecurityContextFactory
root.ldap=org.jasig.portal.security.provider.SimpleLdapSecurityContextFactory

Then you need to add the following:

No Format
principalToken.root.ldap=userName
credentialToken.root.ldap=password
 
principalToken.root.ldap_student=userName
credentialToken.root.ldap_student=password

Review Maven settings.xml

Historically you might have configured a Maven repository "blacklist" in <USER_HOME>/.m2/settings.xml to work around broken dependency downloads (ehcache especially). SSP-2634 should obviate such blacklisting, so if you haven't added it already, there should be no reason to do so. If you've already created a blacklist, it is entirely up to you whether or not to leave it in place.

 

Warning

If you are upgrading an environment, you should delete or change the passwords for the uPortal users created for demonstration purposes. This can be done through the user interface: Manage Users ->  Find an Existing User -> [Enter user ID from list below] -> [Click result] -> Delete or Edit, then change password. Demo users:

  • advisor0
  • ken
  • student0
  • student1

This is only necessary for upgrades. A fresh 2.4.2 install will not create these users.

A fresh install should also either change the admin user's password or add some other user to the Portal Administrators group and delete the admin user.

v2.4.2 JIRA Issues

Bugs

  • [SSP-2643] - Courses on MAP lost during edit
  • [SSP-2654] - DOB search results incorrect before 01/01/1970
  • [SSP-2660] - Print action plan button does not respond
  • [SSP-2697] - Inactive CL appear in Action Plan custom task
  • [SSP-2706] - Search API invoked twice when submitting search form
  • [SSP-2721] - Integrate patched CAS filter
  • [SSP-2723] - Student search column result sorting not working
  • [SSP-2724] - Improved default security.properties configuration

Improvements and New Features

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