HTTP_SM_USER header not found in the header dump

Products

• CA Single Sign On Secure Proxy Server (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign On Agents (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign On Federation (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign On SOA Security Manager (SiteMinder)
• SITEMINDER

Issue/Introduction

We're running a Web Agent and the header HTTP_SM_USER has no value when the
application receives it.

Our application is looking for a variable in the body of this web page
which contains the name of the logged in user. Even though we can see
the logged in user in the header part of this page under the default
Siteminder headers like HTTP_SM_USER, in the body of the page (ie the
lower part of the page) has the same variable blank.

How can we fix that ?

Environment

Web Agent 12.52SP1CR10 on IIS 7.5 on Windows

Resolution

Out of the box, this is as expected. The Web Agent send the sm_user
value in headers only, not in the body.

This is the responsability of the developer to code the page that
receives the data to look into the headers received and pass them to
body of the page.

You should understand that the SM_USER header will not be seen in the
browser as header. The SM_USER header is produced by the Web Agent
which sends it to the application (request). So the application should
look at the header sent by the Web Agent to read its value in the page
body.