Installing and Setting Up an Ident Server

To use Ident authentication, you must install one or more packages, depending on your operating system, and enable the Ident server on your Vertica server. oidentd is an Ident daemon that is compatible with Vertica and compliant with RFC 1413.

You can find the source code and installation instructions for oidentd at the oidentd website.

To install and configure Ident authentication for use with your Vertica database, follow the appropriate steps for your operating system:

Red Hat 6.x/CentOS 6.x

Install oidentd on Red Hat 6.x or CentOS 6.x by running this command:

$ yum install oidentd

Depending on your configuration, you might receive the following error message:

No package oidentd available.

In this case, you must install the Red Hat/CentOS Extras Repository. Download and install the Extras Repository from the following location: https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-6.noarch.rpm

Red Hat 7.x/CentOS 7.x

Install an Ident server on Red Hat 7.x or CentOS 7.x by installing the authd and xinetd packages:

$ yum install authd
$ yum install xinetd

Ubuntu/Debian

Install oidentd on Ubuntu or Debian by running this command:

$ sudo apt-get install oidentd

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

Install the pidentd and xinetd RPMs from the following locations:

Post-Installation Steps for Red Hat 6.x/CentOS 6.x and Ubuntu/Debian

After you install oidentd on your Red Hat 6.x/CentOS 6.x or Ubuntu/Debian system, continue with the following steps:

  1. Verify that the Ident server accepts IPv6 connections to prevent authentication failure. To do so, you must enable this capability. In the script /etc/init.d/oidentd, change the line from:

    exec="/usr/sbin/oidentd"

    to

    exec="/usr/sbin/oidentd -a ::"

    Then, at the Linux prompt, start oidentd with -a ::.

  2. Restart the server with the following command:

    $ /etc/init.d/oidentd restart

Post-Installation Steps for Red Hat 7.x/CentOS 7.x and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

After you install the required packages on your Red Hat 7.x/CentOS 7.x or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server system, continue with the following steps:

  1. Enable the auth service in the configuration file located at the following location: /etc/xinet.d/auth.

    Enter no for the disable option, as this sample configuration file shows.

    service auth 
    { 
            disable = no 
            socket_type = stream 
            wait = no 
            user = ident 
            cps = 4096 10 
            instances = UNLIMITED 
            server = /usr/sbin/in.authd 
            server_args = -t60 --xerror --os 
    }
  2. Restart the xinetd service with the following command:

    $ service xinetd restart