Crowd 3.0 Beta Release Notes

This is a beta version

Beta versions of Crowd Data Center are not intended to be deployed in production environments. Those versions are not feature complete and may contain bugs. Atlassian does not take responsibility for potential data loss or malfunctions caused by Crowd Data Center.

 

Highlights of this release:

 

High availability

Crowd Data Center brings high availability and fault tolerance to Crowd. By setting up multiple Crowd Data Center nodes, you can ensure uninterrupted availability of your user management and authentication services.

For more information on how to set up Crowd Data Center for high availability, see Installing Crowd Data Center.

Complete list of changes and improvements


Crowd 3.0.0-m02

6 July 2017

The Crowd console no longer uses the SOAP API internally

The Crowd console no longer uses the remote SOAP API. This simplifies configuration, and also avoids some problems related to preventing users from accessing the console when the application passwords or allowed addresses don't match.

If you're not using the SOAP API with the 'Crowd' application, we recommend that you remove all configured 'Remote addresses' for the application to prevent remote access. 

As a side effect, Crowd expects that there is only one application of type 'Crowd' configured. That's usually the case and no extra actions are required. If you have been using Crowd 1.5 or earlier, or are restoring a backup of such a version, Crowd will be marked as a 'Generic application'. Crowd will try to find the right application and change its type to 'Crowd' during the first run.

Home directory has a new structure

With Crowd Data Center just behind the corner, we've unified the structure of the home directory for all installations. The following files and directories have been moved to a subdirectory called shared:
  • crowd.cfg.xml
  • plugins
  • backups

After you upgrade to Crowd 3.0.0-m02 or later, your files will be migrated automatically.

The crowd.properties file is no longer used

We've decided to drop the crowd.properties file that held some of the Crowd's configuration properties. Some of these properties are no longer needed (application name and password), while others are now stored in the Crowd's database (cookie settings and the application's base URL). Your properties will be migrated to the database when you run Crowd after the upgrade. Take a look at some extra details below:
  • application.name, application.password – no longer required, because the Crowd console doesn't authenticate through the SOAP API anymore.
  • cookie.tokenkey – stored in the database, migrated during the first startup.
  • crowd.server.url, crowd.base.url – the SOAP server URL is no longer needed; the base URL is now stored in the database, and can be changed in the Crowd console. 
The crowd.properties file might still be used by other applications that integrate with Crowd (CrowdID, or some third-party clients).

File-based directory configuration removed

Crowd no longer supports configuring your directories externally (outside of database). If you have the directories.properties file in your Crowd home directory, directories specified in this file will not work after the upgrade.

SOAP-specific components no longer available to plugins

Since Crowd no longer uses the SOAP API internally (it will still be available for remote clients), several services that were previously exported to plugins will not be available. These services weren't part of the public API, and standalone integrations (not running as P2 plugins in Crowd) can still use them – their APIs haven't changed.

The following services are no longer available:

  • com.atlassian.crowd.integration.http.HttpAuthenticator
  • com.atlassian.crowd.service.soap.client.SecurityServerClient
  • com.atlassian.crowd.service.client.ClientProperties
  • com.atlassian.crowd.integration.soap.springsecurity.user.CrowdUserDetailsService

Local storage in the plugin-data directory is deprecated

We recommend that plugins use the database for persistent storage instead. If that's not possible, plugins should use the shared home directory fetched from com.atlassian.crowd.service.HomeDirectoryService.

Cluster monitoring included in the Crowd console

The Administration menu in Crowd now has a new Cluster Monitoring section, where you can see that state of your cluster.

 


Crowd 3.0.0-m01

25 May 2017

This is the initial release of Crowd Data Center 3.0 Beta. Watch this page for updated builds.

Last modified on Jul 6, 2017

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