Method and apparatus for a system wide logon in a distributed computing environment

Abstract: A system wide sign-on capability in a distributed computing environment (DCE) is provided. Acquired distributed computing environment credentials are usable by any process/window on a desktop. DCE logon application programming interfaces create and recognize the presence of a credentials cache capable of being used by DCE processes in the system. System wide logon occurs whenever the logon API is invoked with the environment variable set. This API is called as a result of the system logon option having been selected. The API updates a global variable with the name of the credentials cache. A process variable is set to the global value by initialization logic for all subsequently invoked applications. As a result, any calls made by these application will acquire the credentials identified by the variable.

Description: The present invention relates to data processing systems, and more particularly, to the propagation of a user's identity throughout a distributed computing environment. Computer users are demanding flexible and sophisticated techniques in hardware and software implementations. This flexibility and sophistication is readily evident in evolving systems which alleviate requiring users to logon multiple times to access nodes (systems) in a network. The concept of a "single sign-on" provides the ability to logon securely to several systems at once using a single access code. Prior to these developments, users who accessed multiple applications or systems during the course of a day encountered many frustrations. The use of a word processing program required a user have a password to access the application. A second password was used to logon and access electronic mail. And the list goes on. A recent study revealed that the average user of four applications spends about 44.4 hours per year just logging on to those applications. If the same user had a single sign-on capability, the time required to log on to the four applications is reduced to about 17 hours per year. A single sign-on capability has been implemented by the IBM Corporation in a version of the Operating System/2 product. This function is accomplished by keeping a single copy of five master system files which are shared by every node. A network administrator arranges the file tree of each user so that the same directories and files are seen regardless of which node the user is logged on to. The file tree provides the capability of logging on from any machine and providing an identical interface from any node, and in effect provides a single system image of the environment from any of the nodes. In summary, the single system image is implemented by keeping only one master copy of the above system files at a master node. Each node has a file of instructions executed at system initial program load (IPL). The master files are loaded over the node's own local copies of these files at IPL. The major deficiency of this method is the requirement for the user to logon to the node before the system wide capabilities can be realized. A second method for eliminating the need for multiple logon has been proposed for the Operating System/2 EE Database Manager product. (OS/2 is a trademark of the IBM Corporation). In the current implementation of the Operating System/2 BE Database Manager product, a logon menu is presented to a user attempting to access a protected object. The function providing the menu is called by the requesting subsystem when it is determined that there has been no valid logon. The proposed implementation provides a remote authorization table (RAT) to alleviate the multiple logon problem. On the user's initial logon (either to the local system or to a remote node), a table is built containing an entry of the user's identity (userid), a password, and identity of the node (e.g., local or remote node name) to which the user is logging on. If the resource to be accessed is on a remote server, the database manager is called by the subsystem to obtain the userid/password for the target node. If no userid/password is in the target node, the most recently used remote for another node is returned. If no logon has occurred, then the local userid/password is passed to the subsystem requestor for use on that system. If the information returned is other than that of the node, a RAT entry is built, composed of the node name and the userid and a password is returned. If the password fails, the subsystem will call user management services to bring up a logon menu to allow the user to provide the correct password for the remote server node. This node is then saved in the RAT for future use replacing the incorrect RAT entry previously built for the node. Like the earlier method, this method too requires a user logon before the system wide capabilities are available to the user. IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, Vol.32, no.8a, Jan. 1990, pp 303-305, 'Logon Assist for Multiple Logons', describes a conventional method to help alleviate the problem of requiring users to logon multiple times to access multiple nodes in a network. It is desirable to have a system wide logon capability accessible to a user without requiring the user logon to a system. In accordance with the present invention, there is now provided a method of providing system wide logon capability to a user at a workstation in a network in a distributed computing environment, comprising: acquiring a user's credentials; establishing a logon environment for said system wide logon capability; characterized by: storing the acquired user's credentials in a local storage area; establishing said logon environment by setting a global variable to point to said user's credentials in said local storage area and storing the contents of the global variable in a process storage area; detecting the loading of an application calling for said system wide logon capability through the use of an environment variable and accessing said user's credentials and automatically logging said user onto said network. Viewing the present invention from another aspect, there is now provided apparatus for providing system wide logon capability to a user at a workstation in a network in a distributed computing environment, comprising: means for acquiring a user's credentials; means for establishing a logon environment for said system wide logon capability; characterized by: means for storing the acquired user's credentials in a local storage area; means for establishing said logon environment by setting a global variable to point to said user's credentials in said local storage area and storing the contents of the global variable in a process storage area; means for detecting the loading of an application calling for said system wide logon capability through the use of an environment variable and accessing said user's credentials and automatically logging said user onto said network. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a method and apparatus for providing a single sign-on code in a distributed computing environment. The embodiment renders the distributed computing environment (DCE) portion of a single user logon into a system wide logon credential. The acquired distributed computing environment credential is usable by any process/window on a desktop. DCE logon APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) create and recognize the presence of a credentials cache capable of being used by DCE processes in the system. DCE applications invoked after a user log-off do not inherit credentials established by the previous system logon. Applications started by the user when logged on will continue to use logged off user's credentials. System wide logon occurs whenever the SEC_LOGIN_SET_CONTEXT API is invoked with the environment variable SINGLELOGIN set. This will be the case when the API is called by the Lan Server (LS) integrated logon program in the DCB2.0 environment. This API is called by DCELOGON as a result of the system logon option having been selected. The API will update a Global variable with the name of the credentials cache. The variable, KRB5CCNAME, will be set to the global value by SBC.DLL initialization logic for all subsequently invoked applications using DCE security if it is not set in the environment already (e.g., a per-process DCELOGON will override the default context). As a result, any SEC_LOGON calls made by these applications will acquire the credentials from the variable. A preferred embodiment of the present invention will now be described by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which: Figure 1 is a block diagram representation of a computer network; Figures 2A and 2B are block diagrams of the functional blocks required for implementation of a system wide logon capability; Figure 2C is a block diagram of the major components of an example of the system wide logon invention; Figure 3 is a flow diagram of the security initialization routine; Figure 4 is a flow diagram of the "Set Context" function for an example of the system wide logon invention; Figure 5 is a flow diagram of the "Get Context" function for an example of the system wide logon invention; Figure 6 is a flow diagram of the purge/release context for an example of the system wide logon invention; and Figure 7 is a block diagram of a computer system capable of implementing a preferred embodiment of the present invention. The embodiment of the invention to be described shortly provides a method and apparatus for propagating a distributed computing environment identification throughout the entire OS/2 process tree even if the identification is not logged in at the root process. As used in this application and known to those skilled in the art, a distributed computing environment (DCE) frees users from being tied to any particular node in a network. DCE is a set of communications protocols defined by the Open Software Foundation. DCE allows a user to access a "home" directory from any machine in the DCE. In addition, DCE allows unlike hardware platforms and operating systems to communicate and share resources. Turning now to Figure 1, there is shown a distributed data processing system/DCE in a communication network. In this environment, each processor at a node in the network potentially may access all the files in the network no matter at which nodes the files may reside. As shown in Figure 1, a distributed network environment 1 may consist of two or more nodes A, B and C connected through a communication link or network 3. The network 3 can be a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN), the latter comprising a switched or leased teleprocessing (TP) connection to other nodes or to a SNA (System Network Architecture) network of systems. At any of the nodes A, B or C there may be a processing system 10A, 10B or 10C, such as an IBM PS/2 Personal Computer or IBM RISC System/6000 workstation. Each of these systems 10A, 10B and 10C may be a single user system or a multi-user system with the ability to use the network 3 to access files located at a remote node in the network. With reference to Figures 2A and 2B, block diagrams of the major components of the system wide logon procedure are shown. Figure 2A illustrates the system logon process where the credentials routine is acquired as shown in block 100. This block represents a series of public API calls which are responsible for authenticating the logging-in user, and building a disk-resident file containing that user's credentials. At block 300, the "set context" block 300 represented a call to the single public API responsible for establishing the previously acquired credentials as those which will be subsequently associated with newly started application processes. The application/credentials association portion of the system wide logon procedure is shown in Figure 2B. At block 200, initialization of the credentials process is shown. The "GET" context block 400 establishes the context for single system wide logon capability. The purge/release context block 500 purges/destroys memory contents allocated for logon parameters. The DCE logoff block 600 is entered from the purge/release block 500 and terminates the DCE logon procedure. Turning now to Figure 2C, the invention is further illuminated by the overview shown therein. The logon process is described in block 20 which consists of acquiring and storing the credentials. In addition, the "SET" context procedure of block 300 (Figure 2A) is executed which culminates with setting the Global variable to <File Name>. The actual file containing the credentials is stored in a user's local storage 24. The <File Name> variable is then stored in Global Storage 22 under the variable SINLOGIN. Subsequently created application processes obtain the system wide credentials as described in block 26. The security dynamic link library (DLL) code 26A contains the process initialization logic which is described in Block 200 (Figure 2B). This code reads the Global variable and sets the process variable. The <File Name> variable is stored in process storage as the variable KRB5CCNAME 26C. Application code 26B contains the "Get" context call, described in Block 400 (Figure 2B), which retrieves the credentials from the file named in KRB5CCNAME. Turning to Figure 3, the flow diagram for the security initialization routine is shown. The procedure starts at block 202 and proceeds to block 204 where a check is done to see if an application is linking to the DCE. If YES, at block 208, the procedure determines if the KRB5CCNAME variable is NULL. If the variable is NULL, at block 210 the procedure checks if SINLOGIN is not NULL. At block 212, the procedure sets the KRB5CCNAME variable to equal SINLOGIN. Turning now to Figure 4, a flow diagram for the set context for the system wide logon is illustrated. The method starts at block 302 where the procedure obtains the ticket name from the input parameter "login context". At block 304, the procedure determines if the SINGLELOGIN environment variable is set. One skilled in the art will appreciate that this is the system logon option. If NO, at block 306 the traditional single-window DCE logon is initiated. At block 308, the procedure sets KRB5CCNAME variable equal to the ticket cache name. At block 310, the procedure resets the NOSINGLELOGONCACHE variable to NULL and marks the default context value for the process at block 312. At block 314, the procedure marks the default context equal to the login context supplied on the call. One skilled in the art will appreciate that this sets the default context (system wide) for all other processes to use. Returning to block 304, if the SINGLELOGIN environment variable is set, a check is done at block 316 to determine if the SINLOGIN segment exist. If YES, at block 318 the procedure updates the SINLOGIN with the ticket cache name. Returning to block 316, if the SINLOGIN segment does not exist, or if the SINLOGIN segment can not be obtained for write access, then at block 322 the procedure stops. Turning to Figure 5, the flow diagram for the "get context" function is shown. The procedure starts at block 402 where a check is conducted to determine if the default context is marked valid. If YES, at block 404 the procedure returns the logon context pointer stored in the default context. One skilled in the art will appreciate that this is the condition where a previous "get context" call has already created and marked the default context valid. Since a default context (system wide logon) is available, it is used as the logon context. Returning to block 402, if the process default context is not valid, at block 406 the procedure sets the "ticket cache" name equal to the value of the variable KRB5CCNAME. At block 408, a check is conducted to determine if the ticket cache name is not NULL and the NOSINGLELOGON variable is set. If YES, at block 418 the ticket cache name is set to null. One skilled in the art will appreciate that this indicates the process' desire to be associated with the machine context. If NO, at block 410 the procedure checks if the ticket cache name is null. If the ticket cache name is NULL, at block 420 the procedure sets the ticket cache name equal to the machine context ticket cache. At block 422, the procedure sets the KRBSCCNAME variable equal to the machine context ticket cache name and resets the NOSINGLELOGONCACHE variable equal NULL at block 424. Returning to block 410, if the ticket cache name is not null, at block 412 the procedure builds the logon context as a function of the ticket cache name. The default context is marked valid at block 414 and the mark default context is set equal to the logon context at block 416. It will be appreciated that the context is built (block 414) using the machine context when the ticket cache name is equal to the machine context. Turning now to Figure 6, a flow diagram of the purge/release context function is shown. At block 502, the procedure determines if the process default context is marked valid and the logon context is equal the default context. If YES, at block 506 the variable KRB5CCNAME is set to NULL and the process default context is marked invalid at block 508. At block 510, the NOSINGLELOGONCACHE variable is set to a non-NULL value and processing continues at block 512. Returning to block 502, if the process default context is not valid, at block 512 the procedure checks to determine if the purge function has been called. If YES, at block 514, the procedure obtains the ticket cache name from the input "logon context" and unlinks (destroys) the credential file at block 516. One skilled in the art will appreciate that "releasing memory" in block 524 of this procedure does not destroy the credential file contents, however, a purge function does clobber/destroy the credential file contents. A check is carried out at block 518 to determine if SINLOGIN was obtained by the write. If YES, at block 520 a check is conducted to see if the ticket cache name is equal to the value stored in the SINLOGIN. If YES, at block 522, the SINLOGIN segment is reset to NULL and the login context memory is released at block 524. This is done to keep the desktop from executing with a clobbered cache. Turning to Figure 7, a generalized computer system/workstation 740 is shown as embodied in a number of commercially available systems such as the IBM PS/2 computer. (PS/2 is a trademark of the IBM Corporation). The current operating system support for the present invention is an Intel Microprocessor with Operating System/2. 2.3. with reference to Figure 6, the basic components include one or more processing units or CPUs 746, hard disk or other permanent storage 742, random access memory 748, network communications support via an adapter 744, and input/output support to display device 754, keyboard 756, pointing device 758 and floppy diskette drive 760 through I/O controller 750. One skilled in the art will appreciate that a computer program product containing computer program logic recorded thereon may be stored on a computer readable medium (e.g., floppy diskette) and inputted to the computer system using the floppy diskette drive 760. These components communicate over a system bus 752. While the invention has been described with respect to a preferred embodiment thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in detail may be made therein without departing from the scope and teaching of the invention.

Claims: A method of providing system wide logon capability to a user at a workstation in a network in a distributed computing environment, comprising: acquiring a user's credentials; establishing a logon environment for said system wide logon capability; characterized by: storing the acquired user's credentials in a local storage area; establishing said logon environment by setting a global variable to point to said user's credentials in said local storage area and storing the contents of the global variable in a process storage area; detecting the loading of an application calling for said system wide logon capability through the use of an environment variable and accessing said user's credentials and automatically logging said user onto said network. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of accessing said user's credentials includes the step of retrieving said user's credentials from said local storage area when said user's credentials are not in said process storage area. Apparatus for providing system wide logon capability to a user at a workstation in a network in a distributed computing environment, comprising: means for acquiring a user's credentials; means for establishing a logon environment for said system wide logon capability; characterized by: means for storing the acquired user's credentials in a local storage area; means for establishing said logon environment by setting a global variable to point to said user's credentials in said local storage area and storing the contents of the global variable in a process storage area; means for detecting the loading of an application calling for said system wide logon capability through the use of an environment variable and accessing said user's credentials and automatically logging said user onto said network. Apparatus as claimed in claim 3 wherein the means for accessing said user's credentials include means for retrieving said user's credentials from said local storage area when said user's credentials are not in said process storage area.

Inventors: KELLS TIMOTHY ROGER, SIGLER WAYNE DUBE, KELLS, TIMOTHY ROGER, SIGLER, WAYNE DUBE, SIGLER, WAYNE DUBE,
Applicants: IBM, INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
Application year: 1996
Main classification: G06F1
IPC codes: G06F21