Farewell to “Master” and “Slave”: new names for system roles in UCS 5.0

UCS 5.0 Beta Release

In December we will open the beta release of UCS 5.0 to the public. For users who have been using UCS for a longer period of time, the renaming of the system roles in particular will bring a significant change, which will be visible in the beta release. In addition to the  removal of known terms of discrimination (“master” and “slave”), we would like to use new names in order to reflect the central functionality of our new system in the respective names. In the following, I will introduce the new naming for the system roles and explain the goals we are pursuing with it.

UCS 5.0 status update: Beta Release in December 2020

UCS 5.0 Beta Release

Almost exactly one year has passed since the announcement that we are working on UCS 5.0. Since then, we have been very busy and made some important steps towards making UCS a future-proof platform. In December 2020, we intend to make the first results publicly available in a Beta Release. In this article, I would like to give you a first taste of the exciting new features that UCS 5.0 will bring.

Connecting Ubuntu and Linux Mint Clients to UCS Domains: New Version of the Univention Domain Join Assistant

The Domain Join Assistant for Univention Corporate Server (UCS) automatically integrates Ubuntu and many Ubuntu-based systems such as Linux Mint into a UCS domain. That way, administrators no longer have to manually configure the client computers. Users can then log into the desktop environment with their UCS credentials – on any client in the domain.
The tool offers a graphical user interface and a command line tool for admins who prefer to work on the shell. We have just released a new version of the Domain Join Assistant that comes with various improvements and supports the latest Ubuntu and Linux Mint versions. In this article I’m going to show you how the tool works and I’m going to introduce the new features.

Release UCS 4.4-5 brings improvements in Single Sign-on, Self Service, more performance for LDAP and compatibility with Python 3

The release of version 4.4-5 of Univention Corporate Server (UCS) brings a series of technical innovations for the Single Sign-on of users to applications connected to UCS. There are also new functions for the UCS Self Service. Users can now register themselves at a UCS domain via the User Self Service and create a user account, assign a user name and password, and store further information. Performance improvements in the LDAP directory service have accelerated the replication of groups. And in preparation for UCS 5.0, which is scheduled for release at the end of this year, our development department has made more than 45 UCS packages compatible with Python 3. So when you upgrade to UCS 5.0, the corresponding code parts in UCS will run for both Python 2 and Python 3. In addition, we have also published a preview of the new UCS 5 portal as an app in the App Center for testers. It already brings important new technical features such as embedding apps directly into the portal page.

Synchronize Password Hashes between MS Active Directory and UCS

Schaubild: UCS Kerberos-Hashes

Version 4.4-4 of Univention Corporate Server (UCS) comes with some cool new features, one of them being the new AD Connector app. It makes the synchronization of password hashes between a Microsoft Active Directory domain and a UCS domain significantly more secure and less error-prone. While previous versions could only synchronize NTLM hashes, the AD Connector of UCS 4.4-4 also reads newer hashes, the so-called Kerberos keys which allow single sign-on (SSO) to different applications.

I am a second-year trainee at Univention (job description: IT specialist for application development). I was involved in the development of the new feature and mainly had to deal with three tasks: the AD Connector itself, the OpenLDAP overlay module, and the S4 Connector (Samba). In this blog post I’m going to explain what Kerberos hashes are and how I implemented the new feature.

Register your own Account – new Self Service for SUSE and UCS

In this article I’m going to introduce our project self-registration of users via UCS Self Services, which we have just implemented for SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH and their Bugzilla and openSUSE Build Service (OBS). The OBS platform is mainly used to develop the openSUSE Linux distribution, but also helps to build packages for Fedora, Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu and, of course, SUSE Linux Enterprise. At the time of writing this article, the openSUSE Build Service hosts about 26,000 projects, approximately 190,000 packages in 36,000 repositories. About 33,000 developers use the service and have registered an account.

Practical Use of the REST API Using the Example of EGroupware

The Univention Directory Manager (UDM) enables access to content in the LDAP directory service, for example viewing, editing, deleting, and moving of objects (users, groups, computers, printers, shares, etc.).
The UDM can be accessed and controlled via both the web interface and the command line. In UCS 4.4-2, a third option has now also been added: the REST API. This interface connects applications with the UCS directory service via HTTPS and supports the maintenance of the user properties or computer objects of the connected systems.
This article begins by explaining the technical background of the REST API and its implementation in UCS.
During the implementation of the REST API, an exciting exchange took place between Univention and the developers at EGroupware GmbH in Kaiserslautern, Germany. As a result, EGroupware became the first solution to employ the new interface in the Univention App Center. In the second section of the article, Ralf Becker from EGroupware explains the implementation of the new API and the advantages it offers providers of third-party applications.

UCS 4.4-4: Fourth Point Release of UCS 4.4

We’ve just published the 4th point release of UCS 4.4: apart from bug fixes and some patches, we added some cool new features and improved numerous apps. For example, UCS 4.4-4 introduces logging of LDAP authentications, something that was previously only available via Samba 4. Our developers also put some work into the AD Connector (enhanced security, performance and compatibility), the Univention App Center and the UCS portal login screen. Read on to find out more about the most important innovations.