Password Setup
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#5 Password Setup
Would someone please demonstrate in plain english how to setup an initial password to get into whiteboard. After countless hours I finally got the program to install on a Xampp server by brute force because I couldn't get it to work on three linux servers, now I can't figure out how to log in. I really don't want to spend another month tinkering with this software just to login. What do you put where in setup.php so you can log in? This is confusing it tells me nothing. Any help would be appreciated.
/YP domain (username/password authentication)--ignore if you changed
authinclude.php to use something other than YP/
/define ("", "www.epreneurs.bz");/
define ("www.epreneurs.bz", "", "admin");
/assignment submission confirmation sent to username@EMAILDOMAIN/
define ("www.faxme4free.net", "www.epreneurs.bz");
/first administrator settings (only used if no administrators exist)/
define ("FIRSTADMINISTRATORNETID", "admin");
define ("FIRSTADMINISTRATORLASTNAME", "Floyd");
define ("FIRSTADMINISTRATORFIRSTNAME", "Loretta");
Bookkeeping: See also support requests 2979208 ( https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2979208&group_id=34692&atid=506029 ) and 2988646 ( https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2988646&group_id=34692&atid=506029 ), which are marked as duplicates of this support request.
I think that you have run into several problems. Let me see if I can break them down.
Whiteboard requires register_globals in your PHP setup:
This is a known issue. Whiteboard was written when this was considered to be somewhat-standard behavior. This issue is also what is keeping the Whiteboard demo server down (the Sourceforge project web space now disables register_globals). I hope to fix this problem soon, but for now if you have the ability to enable register_globals that is necessary to run Whiteboard. There is nothing inherently insecure about register_globals if it is used properly (as I believe that Whiteboard does); see the discussion at http://php.net/manual/en/security.globals.php .
The stock Whiteboard distribution is designed to run in a YP/NIS environment:
YP, a.k.a NIS, is a common (although perhaps not as common as it used to be) means of managing usernames and passwords in an enterprise environment. As is stated in the README, you can find discussion of other authentication modules in the forum for this purpose on the SourceForge project page (http://sourceforge.net/projects/whiteboard/). In particular, there is a module for authenticating from a local password file, and instructions on how to install and use it, at https://sourceforge.net/projects/whiteboard/forums/forum/246890/topic/1045523 . Making this authentication module the default is on the TODO list for the next Whiteboard release.
Whiteboard is not designed to be hosted in an environment that only provides web-accessible directories:
Some hosting providers only provide web-accessible directories. Whiteboard cannot run in such an environment -- it is designed to store uploaded course / assignment materials in a non-web-accessible location so that it can mediate (and authenticate) access to them. It is also advisable to have your setup.php in a non-web-accessible location. This type of setup requires ssh (or similar) access to the machine, not just the ability to add web-accessible files.
The setup.php file is supposed to be edited in a text editor, not loaded in your browser:
The README file is very clear about this.
You must edit the first line (define ("SETUPINCLUDE"...) of/include/include.php to contain the (file system) location of setup.php:/include/include.php, is to look for setup.php in /whiteboard/setup.php). This is why you are getting errors like:
The README file is very clear about this. Whiteboard needs to be able to find setup.php, and the fact that you are supposed to put it someplace that is not web-accessible makes it difficult to set a default path that works for everybody (the default, unless you edit
Fatal error: require() [function.require]: Failed opening required '/whiteboard/setup.php' (include_path='.:/usr/local/php52/pear') in /home/faxme4fr/public_html/whiteboard1.0.3/program/include/include.php on line 28
This is not a problem with PEAR, or Whiteboard's expectation of the PEAR install location; what it is saying is that it cannot find setup.php (because you have not changed that line in /home/faxme4fr/public_html/whiteboard1.0.3/program/include/include.php to point to the full path of your non-web-accessible setup.php as instructed in the README), and that the include path that was set up for your PHP installation (where it is looking as a fallback) is the current directory ('.') and the PEAR directory ('/usr/local/php52/pear').