Security Filter: Controlled Access to Web Pages


Security Filter

Version TC-02

01 March 1998

 

Implemented changes

 

The Security Filter has two types of users:

  1. Web developers, who publish information on the Web and use the Security Filter to control/restrict the access to their HTML pages
  2. People browsing a Web site, where the access to the HTML pages is controlled/restricted by the Security Filter.

Web developers are alerted by the Security Filter when the information they provide either in the starting HTML file or in the configuration files (see the Security Filter documentation) is wrong.

Up to this version the error messages presented to the Web developers were embedded in the Security Filter executable and it was not possible to modify them.

This version allows to create/modify the error messages presented to the Web developers.

 

The Error Messages File

In this version of the Security Filter error messages are stored into a file called "secfil.err".

Error messages are identified in this file by tags. When an error occurs, the Security Filter looks in the error messages file for a particular tag (e.g. <OUTSIDE-FORM>) and prints out all the text found in between that tag and its corresponding closing tag (e.g. </OUTSIDE-FORM>).

The text that can be inserted in between tags is normal HTML text.

Hereafter the various tags and the related error situations are listed.

 

The Error Messages File Location

The Error Messages File default location is embedded in the Security Filter executable and corresponds to the directory where the executable resides.

It is possible anyhow to modify this default location by using the utility "inspath".

To achieve that it is necessary execute the following procedure:

  1. copy the original Security Filter executable into a backup copy
  2. cp secfil secfil.bck

  3. copy the original Security Filter executable into a temporary copy
  4. cp secfil secfil.tmp

  5. use the utility "inspath" to insert the new location
  6. inspath: enter Target File => secfil.tmp
    inspath: enter the Location (directory)
             for the Errors file => /my_location
    inspath: Target File = "secfil.tmp".
             Errors File Location = "/my_location".
    Inspath: is the above information correct [y/n]? y
    
  7. check if the new executable "secfil.tmp" works as expected
  8. replace the old executable with the new one
  9. rm secfil
    mv secfil.tmp secfil

In case it is needed to go back to the default location you can either use the backed up copy or execute again the above procedure using "." (dot) as new location.