From: Patrick R McDonald Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:08:18 +0000 (-0500) Subject: Updated accounts.url directive per warner's suggestions X-Git-Url: https://git.rkrishnan.org/vdrive/%22news.html/frontends/COPYING.TGPPL.html?a=commitdiff_plain;h=95a9972034d12763fdaf9b5951a564486e23f393;p=tahoe-lafs%2Ftahoe-lafs.git Updated accounts.url directive per warner's suggestions --- diff --git a/docs/frontends/FTP-and-SFTP.rst b/docs/frontends/FTP-and-SFTP.rst index ed52e745..18917a2d 100644 --- a/docs/frontends/FTP-and-SFTP.rst +++ b/docs/frontends/FTP-and-SFTP.rst @@ -76,15 +76,28 @@ the next sections. accounts.url Directive ====================== -The accounts.url directive should point to a secure, preferably -localhost-only service. This makes it harder for attackers to brute force -the password or use DNS poisoning to cause the Tahoe-LAFS gateway to talk -with the wrong server, thereby revealing the username and passwords. - -Tahoe-LAFS will send the credentials, email address and password to the -URI specified in the accounts.url directive. If the credentials are correct, -the server will return a rootcap string. Otherwise, it returns the string -"0" which means bad username and/or password. +The accounts.url directive allows access requests to be controlled by an +HTTP-based login service, useful for centralized deployments. This was +used by AllMyData to provide web-based file access, where the service +used a simple PHP script and database lookups to map an account email +address and password into a tahoe rootcap. The service will receive a +multipart/form-data POST, just like one created with a
and +fields, with three parameters: + +* action: "authenticate" (this is a static string, for backwards + compatibility with the old AllMyData authentication service) +* email: USERNAME (Tahoe has no notion of email addresses, but the + authentication service uses them as account names, so the interface + presents this argument as "email" rather than "username"). +* passwd: PASSWORD + +And should return a single string that either contains a Tahoe rootcap +(URI:DIR2:...), or "0" to indicate a login failure. + +Tahoe-LAFS recommends the service be secure, preferably localhost-only. This +makes it harder for attackers to brute force the password or use DNS +poisoning to cause the Tahoe-LAFS gateway to talk with the wrong server, +thereby revealing the usernames and passwords. Configuring FTP Access ======================