Security features of our web server

Our web server provides ssl encryption and user authentication against the NIS (the lab's user database).

Using authentication

Access to web directories can be limited to certain users or groups of users. The login and password are the same as on all machines in the lab. Note that we have enabled SSL encryption for our web content globally.

To enable authentication, place something like the following lines in a .htaccess file:

AuthName "Text that appears on the login prompt"
AuthType Basic
AuthBasicProvider sasl
AuthSaslPwcheckMethod saslauthd
AuthSaslServiceName apache2
AuthzUnixgroup on
AuthzUnixgroupAuthoritative off

You can now add "require" directives that control who is allowed to enter. For example: To allow user1 and user2, as well as all members of group1 add something like this

require user user1 user2
require group group1

If you want to allow access to the web page for anyone who has a user account on the server you can use

require valid-user

Note that multiple require directives are interpreted disjunctively.

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If you want to do something that isn't described here please write an email to sysads@ps.uni-saarland.de. We will then add more instructions here.