Hello all -

We've got an Apache module here on campus that provides us centralized
security (called Websec) that I'd like to roll into Spectra. I did this
before in 1.01 & need to revise for 1.5, so I thought I'd see if anyone
has any better ideas than what I came up with.

Websec gets fired off by an .htaccess file, and I can additionally
provide parameters so certain IPs and ranges & also only certain people
can get through. When the user has authenticated successfully, I get a
websec_token cookie and also their remote_user name is available to me
as a cgi variable. I keep the valid usernames in a separate security
context with all the same passwords; if they've passed websec
authentication, I know they're who they say they are, and I've removed
the ability to change logins once you're past the websec wall o'security
(so you can't gain access above your level).

The problem is primarily that since Websec security is directory based,
I had to get around the fact that I obviously wanted anyone to be able
to see, for example, faculty CV pages, and only fire off Websec when
attempting to edit the pages. And I couldn't just set the .htaccess file
inside the Websec directory since several pages need to make calls there
& wouldn't function. What I ended up doing was making an entirely
separate /secure/ directory with an include file inside of it, and any
call I needed to secure I added a cflocation to a file there. That fires
off Websec, people authenticate (or not), and the file has stored what
page they came from & if authentication was successful, sends them back
to it. So once they've hopped the wall of authentication, they can get
back to what they intended to do. I have to do it this way,
incidentally, as Websec for some reason drops any URL parameters when it
passes you back from authentication.

In any case, while this works well enough it's a bit kludgey and I was
wondering if anyone else had come up with a smoother mechanism for
rolling in Apache style directory based authentication mechanisms. I do
also have a command line utility which I have rolled into a custom tag
for other purposes which, once there's a websec_token available, can
query the security database & return limited identification information,
but I haven't figured out to use this to my advantage in rolling into
the Spectra security model.

Many thanks for any ideas or suggestions.

-- 
Peter Ivanick
Web Developer 
School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]    
Phone: 215.573.2306     Fax: 215.573.8777
http://www.vet.upenn.edu/

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