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The "HttpAuthenticationSchemes" page has been changed by susam. The comment on this change is: Reverting to last good revision, i.e. 22. http://wiki.apache.org/nutch/HttpAuthenticationSchemes?action=diff&rev1=23&rev2=24 -------------------------------------------------- == Introduction to Authentication Scope == Different credentials for different authentication scopes can be configured in 'conf/httpclient-auth.xml'. If a set of credentials is configured for a particular authentication scope (i.e. particular host, port number, realm and/or scheme), then that set of credentials would be sent only to pages falling under the specified authentication scope. - + When authentication is required to fetch a resource from a web-server, the authentication-scope is determined from the host and port obtained from the URL of the page. If it matches any 'authscope' in this configuration file, then the 'credentials' for that 'authscope' is used for authentication. == Configuration == @@ -21, +21 @@ === Prerequisites === In order to use HTTP Authentication, the Nutch crawler must be configured to use 'protocol-httpclient' instead of the default 'protocol-http'. To do this copy 'plugin.includes' property from 'conf/nutch-default.xml' into 'conf/nutch-site.xml'. Replace 'protocol-http' with 'protocol-httpclient' in the value of the property. If you have made no other changes it should look as follows: - {{{ <property> <name>plugin.includes</name> @@ -30, +29 @@ include. Any plugin not matching this expression is excluded. In any case you need at least include the nutch-extensionpoints plugin. By default Nutch includes crawling just HTML and plain text via HTTP, - and basic indexing and search plugins. In order to use HTTPS please enable + and basic indexing and search plugins. In order to use HTTPS please enable - protocol-httpclient, but be aware of possible intermittent problems with the + protocol-httpclient, but be aware of possible intermittent problems with the underlying commons-httpclient library. </description> </property> }}} + === Optional === By default Nutch uses credentials from 'conf/httpclient-auth.xml'. If you wish to use a different file, the file should be placed in the 'conf' directory and 'http.auth.file' property should be copied from 'conf/nutch-default.xml' into 'conf/nutch-site.xml' and then the file name in the '<value>' element should be edited accordingly. The default property appears as follows: + {{{ + <property> + <name>http.auth.file</name> + <value>httpclient-auth.xml</value> + <description>Authentication configuration file for 'protocol-httpclient' plugin.</description> + </property> + }}} + + === Crawling an Intranet with Default Authentication Scope === + Let's say all pages of an intranet are protected by basic, digest or ntlm authentication and there is only one set of credentials to be used for all web pages in the intranet, then a configuration as described below is enough. This is also the simplest possible configuration possible for authentication schemes. {{{ - <credentialsweb-servers which have authentication scopes defined for a few selected realms/schemes. This is discussed in next section. + <credentials username="susam" password="masus"> + <default/> + </credentials> }}} + + The credentials specified above would be sent to any page requesting authentication. Though it is extremely simple, default authentication scope should be used with caution. This set of credentials would be sent to any web-page requesting for authentication and therefore, a malicious user can steal the credentials used in the configuration by setting up a web-page requiring Basic authentication. Therefore, we usually use credentials set apart for crawling only, so that even if a user steals the credentials, he wouldn't be able to do anything harmful. If you are sure, that all pages in the intranet use a particular authentication scheme, say, NTLM, then this situation can be improved a little in this manner. + + {{{ + <credentials username="susam" password="masus"> + <default scheme="ntlm"/> + </credentials> + }}} + + Thus, this set of credentials would be sent to pages requesting NTLM authentication only. Now, one can not set up a page requiring Basic authentication and steal the credentials. NTLM is safer, because password is not sent in clear-text or in a form from which the original password can be recovered directly. + + === Credentials for Specific Authentication Scopes === + The following is an example that shows how two sets of credentials have been defined for different authentication scopes. + For all pages of example:8080 requiring authentication in the 'blogs' or 'wiki' realm, the first set of credentials would be used. + + {{{ + <credentials username="susam" password="masus"> + <authscope host="example" port="8080" realm="blogs"/> + <authscope host="example" port="8080" realm="wiki"/> + </credentials> + <credentials username="admin" password="nimda"> + <default/> + </credentials> + }}} + + However, an important thing to note here is that if some page of example:8080 requires authentication in another realm, say, 'mail', authentication would not be done even though the second set of credentials is defined as default. Of course this doesn't affect authentication for other web servers and the default authscope would be used for other web-servers. This problem occurs only for those web-servers which have authentication scopes defined for a few selected realms/schemes. This is discussed in next section. + === Catch-all Authentication Scope for a Web Server === When one or more authentication scopes are defined for a particular web server (host:port), then the default credentials is ignored for that host:port combination. Therefore, a catch-all authentication scope to handle all other realms and scopes must be specified explicitly as shown below. @@ -55, +94 @@ <authscope host="example" port="8080"/> </credentials> }}} + The last authscope tag for example:8080 acts as the catch all authentication scope. In this section, realms were used to demonstrate the example. The same holds true for schemes also. For example, in the following example, the last authscope tag is necessary if the second set of credentials must be used for all pages of example:8080 not belonging to the authentication scope defined in the first tag. {{{ @@ -66, +106 @@ <authscope host="example" port="8080"/> </credentials> }}} + === Important Points === 1. For <authscope> tag, 'host' and 'port' attribute should always be specified. 'realm' and 'scheme' attributes may or may not be specified depending on your needs. If you are tempted to omit the 'host' and 'port' attribute, because you want the credentials to be used for any host and any port for that realm/scheme, please use the 'default' tag instead. That's what 'default' tag is meant for. 1. One authentication scope should not be defined twice as different <authscope> tags for different <credentials> tag. However, if this is done by mistake, the credentials for the last defined <authscope> tag would be used. This is because, the XML parsing code, reads the file from top to bottom and sets the credentials for authentication-scopes. If the same authentication scope is encountered once again, it will be overwritten with the new credentials. However, one should not rely on this behavior as this might change with further developments. @@ -80, +121 @@ == Need Help? == If you need help, please feel free to post your question to the [[http://lucene.apache.org/nutch/mailing_lists.html#Users|nutch-user mailing list]]. The author of this work, [[http://susam.in/|Susam Pal]], usually responds to mails related to authentication problems. The DEBUG logs may be required to troubleshoot the problem. You must enable the debug logging for 'protocol-httpclient' and Jakarta Commons !HttpClient before running the crawler. To enable debug logging for 'protocol-httpclient' and !HttpClient, open 'conf/log4j.properties' and add the following lines: - {{{ log4j.logger.org.apache.nutch.protocol.httpclient=DEBUG,cmdstdout log4j.logger.org.apache.commons.httpclient.auth=DEBUG,cmdstdout }}} + It would be good to check the following things before asking for help. 1. Have you overridden the 'plugin.includes' property of 'conf/nutch-default.xml' with 'conf/nutch-site.xml' and replaced 'protocol-http' with 'protocol-httpclient'?
