<include TaskForest::REST::PassThrough /head.html />

<include TaskForest::REST::PassThrough /head_docs.html />

<div class="width6 last">
  <div class="section_header">Web Server Security</div>
  <p>
    To use the webserver (or even the web service described later) you
    must have a valid userid and password. <code>taskforestd</code> does
    not ship with any default userid and password pairs. A password is
    required to authenticate the person making requests via the web
    browswer. This userid and password combination may be (and should be)
    different from the userid and password of the account under which
    taskforestd is running.
  </p>

  <p>
    Which reminds me, as you would expect, <code>taskforestd</code> runs with the
    privileges of the account that invoked the program. If that account
    does not have permissions to read and write the job and family files,
    you will not be able to use the web server.
  </p>

  <p>
    It is <b>not</b> a good idea to run <code>taskforestd</code> as root,
    because even though taskforestd is written with security in mind,
    running as root opens a huge security hole. And anyway, you shouldn't
    run as root any program that you download off the 'net any more than
    you should give a stranger the keys to your house.
  </p>

  <p>
    The best method is to create a separate system user account
    for <code>taskforest</code> and <code>taskforestd</code>, and run the
    web server and command line requests as that user.
  </p>

  <p>
    Coming back to the <code>taskforestd</code> userid and password: The
    userids and passwords are specified in the configuration file using
    the same format as Apache's .htpasswd files. You can see commented-out
    examples of this in
    the <a href="/docs/runningTaskForestd.html#config_file">configuration
    file <code>taskforestd.cfg</code></a>. For your convenience, the
    TaskForest distribution includes a program
    called <code>gen_passwd</code> that generates text that you can copy
    and paste into the config file:
  </p>

  <div class="code"><pre><code>gen_passwd foo bar</code></pre></div>

  The above command will print out somthing that looks like the following;

  <div class="code"><pre><code>foo:4poVZGiAlO1BY</code></pre></div>

  <p>
    This text can then be copied and pasted into the configuration file as
    a <a href="/docs/runningTaskForestd.html#valid_user">valid_user
    option</a>.
  </p>

  <p>
    Please see
    the <a href="/docs/runningTaskForestd.html#config_file">included
    configuration file, taskforestd.cfg</a>, for a list of each
    configuration option, and what it means.
  </p>

  <p>
    Please keep in mind that the <code>>taskforestd</code> server is not
    encrypted. Your userid and password will be transmitted in
    cleartext. This is a huge security hole. Do not do this unless both
    the client and the server behind a firewall, for example in a local
    intranet. If someone sniffs your unencrypted userid and password, they
    can change job files, family files, or delete them too.
  </p>

  <p>
    If you wish to use an encrypted, SSL-enabled server, please use the
    included <code>taskforestdssl</code> program instead
    of <code>taskforestd</code>. The only difference between the two is
    that the taskforestd
    uses <a href="http://search.cpan.org/search?mode=all&query=HTTP%3A%3ADaemon"><code>HTTP::Daemon</code></a>,
    and <code>taskforestdssl</code>
    uses <a href="http://search.cpan.org/search?mode=all&query=HTTP%3A%3ADaemon%3A%3ASSL"><code>HTTP::Daemon::SSL</code></a>. To
    set up SSL, you will need to set up a server key and a server
    certificate. The locations of these files may be specified in the
    <a href="/docs/runningTaskForestd.html#config_file">taskforestd
    configuration file</a>,
    under <a href="/docs/runningTaskForestd.html#server_key_file">server_key_file</a>
    and <a href="/docs/runningTaskForestd.html#server_cert_file">server_cert_file</a>,
    respectively. You can find more information in the documentation
    of <a href="http://search.cpan.org/search?mode=all&query=HTTP%3A%3ADaemon%3A%3ASSL"><code>HTTP::Daemon::SSL</code></a>.
  </p>

  <p>
    If you would like to self-sign a certificate, there are some
    instructions in the <a href="/docs/howto.html">HOWTO section</a>.
  </p>

  <p>
    If your system does not support SSL (for example, with openssl), and
    you would like to use taskforestd across the Internet, my advice would
    be: ``Don't.'' If you do, you would essentially be giving the world
    the ability to run any command on your server. If you still want to do
    it, at least make sure that the system account that taskforestd runs
    under does not have write access to any files, especially those in
    <a href="/docs/runningTaskForestd.html#job_dir">job_dir</a>, <a href="/docs/runningTaskForestd.html#log_dir">log_dir</a>
    and <a href="/docs/runningTaskForestd.html#family_dir">family_dir</a>. This
    means that you would not be able to change job or family files or
    schedule reruns using taskforestd, but neither would the rest of the
    world be able to do that on your machine.
  </p>
  
</div>
<div class="clear_both"></div>


<include TaskForest::REST::PassThrough /foot.html />