4.7 Session Storage and Bootstraps

The ZXID session system serves three purposes:

1. Remember whether user has logged in. The session ID is carried either in a cookie or as part of the URL.

2. Make it possible to perform Single Logout (SLO) and certain federation management tasks.

3. Remember the service end points (EPRs) that were either

   1. supplied as bootstrap attributes in the SSO assertion, or

   2. later discovered

The biggest complication is the requirement to remember the EPRs and the solution currently used is to keep them as files in a per session directory under the /var/zxid/ses tree.

  /var/zxid/
   |
   +-- zxid.conf  Main configuration file
   +-- pem/       Our certificates
   +-- cot/       Metadata of CoT partners (metadata cache)
   +-- ses/       Sessions
   |    |
   |    +-- SESID/         Each session has its own directory
   |         |
   |         +-- .ses      The session file
   |         +-- SVC,SHA1  Each bootstrap is kept in its own file
   |
   +-- user/      Local user accounts (if enabled)
   |    |
   |    +-- SHA1/ Each local user has a directory whose name is SHA1
   |         |    of the user's NameID (idpnid)
   |         +-- .mni     Information needed by Name ID management
   |
   `-- log/       Log files, pid files, and the like