man(8)

💖 man(8) — mellon_create_metadata, bestie edition 💖

okay so you're in section 8 of the manual, and we're talking about mellon_create_metadata from the mellon_create_metadata manual page. pull up a chair, grab a strawberry 🍓, we're setting up some SAML and it's gonna be adorable.

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✨ NAME ✨

mellon_create_metadata — the lil glow-up tool that populates your initial SP metadata for mod_auth_mellon 🦋

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

mellon_create_metadata ENTITY-ID ENDPOINT-URL

that's it. two arguments. two!! you got this, no cap.

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👑 DESCRIPTION 👑

so the Apache module mod_auth_mellon is out here providing a SAML 2.0 service provider (SP) — that's the whole vibe. but here's the thing, bestie: a service provider needs metadata to function. it simply cannot slay without it. 😭

and that's literally where mellon_create_metadata comes in — it creates the initial configuration for you. ✨

when you run it, three files show up in the current directory:

1. a public key 🔑
2. a private key 🔐 (keep this one safe fr fr)
3. a boilerplate metadata xml file 📄 — and this one already has the public key and the URLs of this installation baked in, and you can edit it further at will, whenever, however, it's yours

the way you reference these in your config options, in order:

• MellonSPPrivateKeyFile — the private key file 💜
• MellonSPCertFile — the cert file 🎀
• MellonSPMetadataFile — the metadata file 🌈

respectively. yes, in that order. iykyk. 💅

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

okay so technically these are the two positional arguments, and they are not optional, so let's give them the main character energy they deserve:

• ENTITY-ID — this is the entity ID you want for your SP, and listen: it needs to be globally unique. globally!! so it's an URL or a URN, probably with your own domain in it. no duplicates, that's the rule. 👑
• ENDPOINT-URL — the full URL to your mellon installation. it normally ends with "/mellon" unless you've configured it otherwise. that's it, that's the note. 🦋

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⭐ EXAMPLE ⭐

here's a whole moment, an actual example, look at her go:

mellon_create_metadata urn:someservice https://sp.example.org/mellon

ate. no notes. 🔥

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🫶 AUTHOR 🫶

this iconic human made it: Thijs Kinkhorst <thijs.kinkhorst@surfnet.nl>

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and that's the whole page, bestie — version 1.0, dated 25 January 2020, living its life as part of the mellon_create_metadata manual page in section 8 of the manual. go forth and make some metadata, you absolute legend. 💖✨🎀🦋🌸💅🫶