TWikiUserAuthentication < TWiki

---## TWiki Authentication

TWiki does not authenticate users internally, it depends on the ==REMOTE_USER== environment variable. This variable is set when you enable basic authentication or authentication via SSL (https protocol)

TWiki keeps track who made changes to topics at what time. This gives a complete audit trail of changes.

No special installation steps need to be performed in case the server is already autenticated. If not you can opt for one of these:
	* Forget about authentication. All changes will be registered as %MAINWEB%.TWikiGuest user, e.g. you can't tell who made changes.
	* Use basic authentication for the ==edit== and ==attach== scripts. [[TWikiDocumentation#TWiki_Installation_Notes][TWiki Installation Notes]] tells you more about that.
	* Use SSL to authenticate and secure the whole server.

The ==REMOTE_USER== environment variable is only set for the scripts that are under authentication. If for example the ==edit==, ==save== and ==preview== scripts are authenticated, but not ==view==, you would get your WikiName in ==preview== for the ==%<nop>WIKIUSERNAME%== variable, but ==view== will show ==TWikiGuest== instead of your <nop>WikiName.

There is a way to tell TWiki to remember the user for the scripts that are not authenticated, e.g. for the case where the ==REMOTE_USER== environment variable is not set. TWiki can be configured to remember the IP address / username pair whenever an authentication happens (edit topic, attach file). Once remembered, the non authenticated scripts like ==view== will show the correct username instead of ==TWikiGuest==. You can enable this by setting the ==$doRememberRemoteUser== flag in ==TWiki.cfg==. TWiki persistently stores the IP address / username pairs in file ==$remoteUserFilename==, which is =="$dataDir/remoteusers.txt"== by default. Please note that this can fail in case the IP address changes due to dynamically assigned IP addresses or proxy servers. 

Test: You are %WIKIUSERNAME%.

-- PeterThoeny - 16 Mar 2001 <br>

This topic: TWiki > TWikiUserAuthentication
Topic revision: r2 - 2001-03-16 - PeterThoeny

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