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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!news.sprintlink.net!dispatch.news.demon.net!demon!palmer.demon.co.uk!palmer.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail From: gary@palmer.demon.co.uk (Gary Palmer) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Appache WWW Server - Help needed Date: 17 Aug 1995 03:56:02 +0100 Organization: none Lines: 45 Message-ID: <40ub42$4um@palmer.demon.co.uk> References: <40qgdm$35u@noc.tor.hookup.net> <jcaron-1608950011550001@mon2-07.planete.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: pc.my.org X-NNTP-Posting-Host: palmer.demon.co.uk In article <jcaron-1608950011550001@mon2-07.planete.net>, Jacques Caron <jcaron@pressimage.net> wrote: >In article <40qgdm$35u@noc.tor.hookup.net>, Thomas Schroecker ><thomas@canadian-agra.com> wrote: >>With the help of a whole bunch of people I got the appache www server >>compiled and running on my FreeBSD machine. Now a quick question. In >>the transfer logs it shows you the domain from where a document was >>accessed, and the date and time of the accessing. Now is there simple >>way to find out the actual user ID of the person who accessed it. If >>there isn't an easy way is there a hard way to do it? >>Any suggestion/coments? >The user ID? How would you know that? And what is a user ID on a PC or a >Macintosh? >HTTP doesn't provide such info, so you can't get it. True, but there is a hard, and un-reliable way of doing it. You can probably hack your WWW server to use the `auth' port on the client machine to find out the username. This has several drawbacks: 1) For non-workstation environments, it's normally worthless, even if it works. 2) For workstation environments, auth isn't widely recognised as something you must run. Most people I have talked to say that auth is unreliable unless the caller is a machine under your administrative control. 3) A high percentage of machines on the 'net, no matter what class or operating system they run, don't run identd, the daemon which supplies auth information. It'll also slow down your server, in that it'll likely have to wait for the information to be provided before supplying any information of it's own, and can you imagine the time that would add if you like images on your pages? You did ask for the hard way :-) Gary -- FreeBSD Core Member E-Mail: Gary@Palmer.Demon.co.uk, gpalmer@FreeBSD.org