• Product: Aleph
• Product Version: 20, 21, 22, 23
• Relevant for Installation Type: Dedicated-Direct, Direct, Local, Total Care

Problem Symptoms:
1. When trying to login, this error displays:

  opensaml::saml2md::MetadataException 

2. When restarting Shibboleth, in the /var/log/shibboleth/shibd.log the following error is displayed:
  fatal error on line 0, column 0, message: unable to open primary document entity '<location of file>'

3. When trying to login, in the /var/log/shibboleth/shibd.log the following error is displayed:
  Unable to locate metadata for identity provider

Cause:
The metadata URL of the IdP is not available and the backup file is not located in its path.

Resolution:
1. In /etc/shibboleth/shibboleth2.xml make sure that the file configured as the 'backingFilePath' exists under /var/run/shibboleth/ if only the file name is used or under a different path if it is fully specified. 
2. Check with the IdP provided why the IdP metadata URL configured in the line

   <MetadataProvider type="XML" uri="http://something.com/metadata.xml"

does not reply.

• Article last edited: 6-Jun-2016