$400 Bounty

Many of you have been experiencing login problems since Spring break. The problem appears to be non-trivial and ITAP has not been able to help. We are thus seeking you help. The first student who can fix the problem will get $400.

If you are a Purdue student and think you are up to the task, please contact the Rhea team (kiwi@ecn.purdue dot you know what) ASAP.

Details:

• Zach Mason is currently looking into the problem but he does not see a quick fix. The idea is to be able to solve the problem before Zach does, hopefully before the end of next week. If the problem could get fixed tonight (Thursday 4-1-10) that would be awesome!
  
• About the problem itself: The Rhea server (kiwi.ecn.purdu.edu) is running linux. We are using Purdue career accounts for logins, in addition to local logins. Local logins work fine, only the Purdue career accounts sometimes hang up.  In order to enable login with a Purdue career account, the Rhea server needs to talk to the LDAP server over SSL. Currently, an error is produced when trying to open the TLS channel. The error happens in PHP's LDAP implementation (which is based on open-LDAP and open SSL). We have a guess what the root problem might be but we are not sure. We are looking for ideas on how to solve or diagnose the problem.
  
• All the people who have emailed kiwi@ecn stating that they wish to participate should get an email from Zach asking them for input.
  
• Yes, we will tell you how many people are tackling the challenge so you can decide whether this is worth your time.
  
• No, this is NOT an April fool's joke.
• Some people have suggested that the security certificate is expired: this is not the case. The problem is a lot more tricky than that.
• Do you have any more questions, you can post them here (assuming you can login...).