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