cgiwrap-users

[cgiwrap-users] Authentication without .htaccess

[Eetu H. <eh...@ik...>]

I'm trying to set up TWiki for the site of my students' organization.
The site is hosted by the university and the environment is best
described as paranoid. After a long search I finally found a content
management system which is at least somehow compatible with cgiwrap, but
now I'm in trouble...

I've read all the discussions in the archive regarding cgiwrap's problem
with .htaccess and tried to get the administration of the server to help
me, but it wasn't possible because the excact server doesn't have a
centralized user database and using one from a remote server would force
the use of ssl, which isn't available.

I guess many people have solved this problem before me and now I'm
begging for advice. I'm in no way a professional/experienced perl or cgi
(let alone http (yes, I do mean the protocol)) programmer, so I'd prefer
a readymade authentication library/script which could be used to replace
.htaccess and .htpasswd in cgi scripts.

TWiki's registration uses .htpasswd, so I would prefer this alternative
authentication method to use it as well, but this is of course not
obligatory.

-- 
"You know how people always say that thing about artists making work 
with political content? That they're "preaching to the converted"? 
Well, we're totally into that." -Johanna Fateman, Le Tigre, 
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/01/19/music-davis.php

Re: [cgiwrap-users] Authentication without .htaccess

[Nathan N. <nn...@um...>]

I've actually looked at this a bit recently, but not thoroughly. The
approach I take with cgiwrap and authentication is to have all or
nothing authentication w/ one database.

Problem is - there is no way to trigger/require authentication from a
cgi script without help from the web server. Apache does not export the
HTTP_AUTHORIZATION value to scripts (for good reason). So, you pretty
much have to have a central db for authentication.

Without the central DB, your best bet would probably be to front-end the
twiki scripts with a cgi (that doesn't read it's STDIN) that uses
cookies for authentication. Or find a cookie-auth plugin for twiki if
something like that exists.

-- Nathan

On Fri, 2002-11-29 at 12:49, Eetu Huisman wrote:
> I'm trying to set up TWiki for the site of my students' organization.
> The site is hosted by the university and the environment is best
> described as paranoid. After a long search I finally found a content
> management system which is at least somehow compatible with cgiwrap, but
> now I'm in trouble...
> 
> I've read all the discussions in the archive regarding cgiwrap's problem
> with .htaccess and tried to get the administration of the server to help
> me, but it wasn't possible because the excact server doesn't have a
> centralized user database and using one from a remote server would force
> the use of ssl, which isn't available.
> 
> I guess many people have solved this problem before me and now I'm
> begging for advice. I'm in no way a professional/experienced perl or cgi
> (let alone http (yes, I do mean the protocol)) programmer, so I'd prefer
> a readymade authentication library/script which could be used to replace
> .htaccess and .htpasswd in cgi scripts.
> 
> TWiki's registration uses .htpasswd, so I would prefer this alternative
> authentication method to use it as well, but this is of course not
> obligatory.
-- 

------------------------------------------------------------
Nathan Neulinger                       EMail:  nn...@um...
University of Missouri - Rolla         Phone: (573) 341-4841
Computing Services                       Fax: (573) 341-4216