Manage Credentials

Credentials that you use with LDAP Administrator to establish authorized connection to protected LDAP resources, are stored in a centralized location and thus available via Credentials Manager. To launch the manager, click Credentials Manager in the Tools menu.

Credentials Manager enables you to add, edit and delete your credentials.

Add Credentials

There are three ways for credentials to get to their centralized storage:

When you specify new credentials while creating or modifying a profile.
When you specify new credentials while following referrals.
When you specify new credentials directly from inside Credentials Manager.

To be able to add new credentials, launch Credentials Manager and click Add to display the Add Credentials dialog. Use it to specify an authentication mechanism, credentials along with a new or existing server host and port to associate new credentials with. You can also make the new credentials available for all server profiles.

Choosing Directory Server to Associate Credentials

You can associate new credentials with either an existing server via selecting a host and port you need from the list offered, or any other valid host and port. Specifying Any in the port selection list will make the new credentials available for all servers connected to the specified host.

To make new credentials available for all servers, choose the Host is not specified item from the list offered.

Specifying Authentication Information

To authenticate to an LDAP server, you need to choose one of the available methods. LDAP Administrator supports the following authentication mechanisms:

Simple
Digest MD5
GSS Negotiate

Principal and password always depend on the authentication mechanism you have chosen. If you want Credentials Manager to store your password, check the Save password box. Otherwise LDAP Administrator will require a password before connecting to a server.

With new credentials added, they will become available via Credentials Manager for you to use when connecting to a server or when following a referral.

Edit Credentials

If your credentials need to be changed, you can edit them using Credentials Manager.

To edit existing credentials:

Launch Credentials Manager.
Select the target credentials from the list displaying the ones available for a currently selected server. Use the drop-down list at the top of the dialog to choose a server whose credentials you want displayed. Selecting the All item will display all available credentials, while choosing the Host is not specified item will reduce the list down to just the 'shared' credentials.
Click Edit to launch the Edit Credentials dialog.

The changes made will apply to all server profiles which use the modified credentials. Suppose you have a few server profiles using the credentials being edited. In this case, if you uncheck the Save password box for this set of credentials, the application will ask you to specify your password the next time you try to connect to the server these profiles point to.

Remove Credentials

If some set of credentials becomes redundant, you can use Credentials Manager to delete it.

To remove a set of existing credentials:

Launch Credentials Manager.
Select the target credentials from the list displaying the ones available for a currenly selected server. Use the drop-down list at the top of the dialog to choose a server whose credentials you want displayed. Selecting the All item will display all available credentials, while choosing the Host is not specified item will reduce the list down to just the 'shared' credentials.
Click Remove.

If you remove some credentials currently used by one or more server profiles, it means that the application will now start asking you for a password every time you try to connect to a server or servers these profiles point to.

Duplicate Credentials

If you want certain credentials, which have already been mapped to a particular host and port, to also become available for getting access to some other host and port but making this set shared, you can use Credentials Manager to duplicate them.

To duplicate a set of existing credentials:

Launch Credentials Manager.
Select the target credentials from the list displaying the ones available for a currenly selected server. Use the drop-down list at the top of the dialog to choose a server whose credentials you want displayed. Selecting the All item will display all available credentials, while choosing the Host is not specified item will reduce the list down to just the 'shared' credentials.
Click Duplicate.
Specify a new host and port in the Duplicate Credentials dialog displayed.

Credentials Matching Priority

LDAP Administrator allows you to set which credentials and in which order must be used for a specific server when following LDAP Referrals that refer to this server.

To set the priority for matching credentials:

In the Credentials Manager, select the server, for which you want to set the order of credentials usage, and click Priority Matching.
In the dialog that opens, select the credentials you want to be used by default and click the button until the selected credentials are on the top of the list.
If you want other credentials to be used if connecting with the main credentials failed, select them and move them to the top of the list using the button until they are located under the main credentials.
If you don’t want some credentials to be automatically used for this server referrals, set a flag in the Ignore field for these credentials.

There are two fundamentally different ways of how credentials get inside Credentials Manager: it is either via the Add Credentials dialog or the Profile Credentials property page. The way a set of credentials has been added directly affects its lifetime. That is, credentials added into Credentials Manager via the Add Credentials dialog will remain there until you explicitly delete them from using Credentials Manager. But, as to credentials entered via the Profile Credentials property page, they can also be deleted in case the last profile referring to them has been removed.

Manage Credentials

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