[OpenID] An Ode to OpenID

Tue Sep 8 01:23:26 UTC 2009

The not particularly interesting ode video led me to your (much more interesting) blog site, one of whose entries talked about delegation using Opera Unite. No odes were ever found, but one odyssey did result.

1. I followed the instructions, and got myself a vanity openid: http://home.homepw.operaunite.com/a that delegates to homepw.myopenid.com

This is cute, because it only seems to work when I'm online (since only then is the index.html doing the delegation available to relying party sites).

Used at Slashdot (based on Janrain's RPX integration, I believe), http://home.homepw.operaunite.com/a got me to the Slashdot account linking screen. It failed at Plaxo.

2. So then I went to another RP, freexri.com and hit the login button (using the openid signin option). Obviously, I supplied my shiny new vanity name from operaunite: http://home.homepw.operaunite.com/a. Things properly pinged back to myopenid, and I authorized release of an assertion and the null persona of attributes.

3. I created myself a shiny new XRI, which is called @id*home.homepw.operaunite.com, using my current account which has several XRIs (you may need a new account, if this is your first time through XRI land), providing the capcha. Thereafter, I selected the option for the XRI that it would have an openid i-service attached. That is: I now have @id*home.homepw.operaunite.com delegating to http://home.homepw.operaunite.com/a (which ...delegates to ...). If I do XRI resolution on that name, I see all  that properly reflected in the XRD markup, using local name of http://home.homepw.operaunite.com/a (operating under the openid (not XRI) semantics of an local name since the local name is in the SEP/link, not the XRD body).

4. I logged out of the RP, fully. Logging back in to this RP (nominally to create a synonym to next see if the polyarchical stuff really "works" with delegation), I obviously now cited my shiny new XRI @id*home.homepw.operaunite.com. The myopenid page eventually showed, but wants me to  solve this:

"myOpenID is not authorized to verify that "@!B1E8.C27B.E41C.25C3!5adb.130d.2ac2.be9e" is your identifier. If it is your identifier, you can set up myOpenID to verify it. See the help page for more information."

How can I do this in my XRD? (Assume I login to the freexri.com RP locally, to get back my admin privileges, since Im operating a master XRI account)

5. Then I did the same at plaxo, for @id*home.homepw.operaunite.com

This time I got

"myOpenID is not authorized to verify that "http://home.homepw.operaunite.com/a/content/" is your identifier. If it is your identifier, you can set up myOpenID to verify it. See the help page for more information."

To solve THIS one, I think I need merely put the magic "proof" file (that proves control over the "domain") onto the webserver under the above path. Does this feel correct? If so, Ill add the myopenid proof file to my file system (!).

6. Remembering that my XRI also has a +contact i-service bound to it, with its own delegations built in to the HXRI variant of my XRI, I had a look at the contact page that one gets from following 302's issued by the https://xri.freexri.com/@id*home.homepw.operaunite.com.

At the end of the chain, at http://contact.freexri.com/contact/@id*home.homepw.operaunite.com

We see the HTML-centric metadata:

<link rel="openid.server" href="http://www.myopenid.com/server" />

<link rel="openid2.provider" href="http://www.myopenid.com/server" />

<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://xri.net/http://home.homepw.operaunite.com/a/content/" />

<link rel="openid2.local_id" href="http://xri.net/http://home.homepw.operaunite.com/a/content/" />

I find it strange that one resolution of the contact service at XRI proxy would delegate to the synonmy resolution service at another proxy. Additionally, the form of the local_id looks weird, but is not actually illegal, apparently.  But, let's try it at the plaxo. anyways.

After ignoring the problems with the https variant (since plaxo  doesn't know about the freexri SSL cert domain), we got

myOpenID is not authorized to verify that http://xri.net/http://home.homepw.operaunite.com/a/content/ is your identifier. If it is your identifier, you can set up myOpenID to verify it. See the help page<https://www.myopenid.com/help#own_domain> for more information.

Well at least that's familiar. How do I now fiddle around with XRI/XRD or my contact page so I can make myopenid happy?

7 I find it strange that Slashdot could get myopenid to assert for my opera delegation uri but myopenid will not react to more advanced cases.

There seems to be a distinction being drawn, between delegation and delegation for domains. The former is detected and myopenid finds it acceptable to make an assertion, but the latter cases require additional proof over control of the domain/URL.

I wish the spec was clear on all this!

-----Original Message-----
From: openid-general-bounces at lists.openid.net [mailto:openid-general-bounces at lists.openid.net] On Behalf Of Santosh Rajan
Sent: Monday, September 07, 2009 12:13 PM
To: general at openid.net
Subject: [OpenID] An Ode to OpenID

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztc4V3ttlso&feature=related

-----

Santosh Rajan

http://santrajan.blogspot.com http://santrajan.blogspot.com

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