André Warnier wrote: > Dondi Williams wrote: >> I am running Apache 2.2.9 on a Windows Vista PC and have unique UIDs >> for my >> family members. I want each family member to have their own unique >> home page >> when they login to the PC. How can I enable this within Apache? I also >> have >> PHP 5.2.6 operational. > > Ok, I'll bite, but just a little bit. > > What you are asking, could become technically very complex, and I am not > sure if the circumstances really justify such work. > > I think first, you have to imagine the following situation, because that > is, technically, how it is : > imagine that your Apache server does not run on the Windows XP PC where > you login (in Windows) as a user, but that this Apache server runs on a > separate machine connected to your PC through the network. > > When you login to your PC as a user, Apache does not know that. > Then you call up Internet Explorer, and Apache still does not know that. > Then in IE, you enter the URL of the Apache server (in this case, > probably just "http://localhost";) and IE sends a HTTP request to the > server "localhost", for the page "/", through a TCP/IP link, using the > HTTP protocol. It just happens that this "localhost" is in your case the > same machine, but it could just as well be another machine on the other > side of the world.
Basic http authentication would require a username and password via the .htaccess and .htpassword files. that would address the apache knowing which user problem. > When Apache gets this request, via TCP/IP, it gets exactly these 2 lines : > GET / HTTP/1.1 > Host: localhost > > That's it. > In other words, Apache does not get any information as to who is > logged-in on the machine that runs this browser that sent this request. > (And that's good, because otherwise, any website in the world to which > you connect via IE, would get your Windows login userid). > > In order for Apache to get additional information indicating "who" sent > this request, you would have to have in place some authentication > scheme, at the IE level and at the Apache level, that forces IE to send > a user-id to Apache, at the same time as the request. This might be > possible, but it is complicated at the best of times, and in this case > would be /very/ complicated. > > So, what I suggest instead in this : > > As far as I know, when you set up different user accounts under Windows > XP, Windows keeps a separate "profile" per user. Among the information > stored in that per-user profile, is probably each user's "preferences" > in IE, among which the "preferred start page" of each user. > Why don't you then set up different html pages in Apache (one for each > user), and then set up, for each user in IE, this page as their > preferred homepage ? > > In other words, when userA logs in and calls up IE, IE will > automatically load the URL "http://localhost/homepages/userA.html";. > And when userB logs in, IE will automatically call up the page > "http://localhost/homepages/userB.html";. Serving a different page based on which username authenticated in basic authentication also provides this functionality. basic authentication is pretty much useless if security is a concern, but it is an effective identifier for the OP's purposes, if your reading of the post is correct. Now, if the O.P. wants apache as a network login / file server, completely different answer needed. ldap? *sql? which of the multiple authentication schemes will best suit the needs? It's a toss-up as to which login model he meant. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The official User-To-User support forum of the Apache HTTP Server Project. See <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/userslist.html> for more info. To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@httpd.apache.org " from the digest: users-digest-unsubscr...@httpd.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@httpd.apache.org
