[Zope] newbie: superuser login authorization failed

Tony McDonald tony.mcdonald@ncl.ac.uk
Sun, 17 Jun 2001 17:04:06 +0100


On 17/6/01 4:23 pm, "Nicole Lallande" <nicole@nmlconsulting.com> wrote:

> 
> I try to use RPM installations most of the time because I am a 'sunday
> programmer' and tarball installations tend to require more of my input -
> but at this point I give up on the rpms both the powertools version and
> the zope list version - been down those roads for 2 days now with no
> success.  
> 

Yes, I know where you're coming from - I tried the RPM stuff on my LinuxPPC
box and it was neat, but as there weren't all that many RPMs for LinuxPPC, I
ended up having to do the 'source code shuffle' anyhow! :)

>> (I note you haven't got a filename in the above zpasswd line).
> 
> I had it in there - I have successfully added and changed passwords in
> this file but it is still not recognized - I sure hope I don't get
> through the tarbal install and find that the problem is with NN4.77 -
> please tell me that is NOT going to happen!  I wonder about encoding -
> if the browser encodes the password using a different encoding method
> than it was created with in the access file - then how can they be
> matched?  the zpasswd.py file mentions three different encoding options
> - SHA, UNIX and CLEARTEXT - the question is what is the browser using?
> 

Good point - I'm not sure. What I tend to do is edit the first line in the
access or inituser file, which is probably showing;

admin:{SHA}efba6152febsfa  (I think)

And edit it so's it says this

admin:abc123

Ie the password is being sent in the clear. This is generally a baad thing,
but you can set things up (again using those VirtualHostMonsters - VHM - and
Apache), so that any management URLs are sent using https if you want to.

> 
> OK - now I do have a working python compiler - but why would I want to
> do the source install if I have the binaries?  is there any benefit of
> doing the source installation vs the other?
> 

In general I would have said no. However, if you have a working Python
installation and you have (say) MySQL adaptors and PDF generators and the
like installed within that python installation, your Zope installation gets
all this for free (within External Methods - but let's not go there *just*
yet).


> Also thanks for your advice on the Zserver vs apache configuration -
> something I read somewhere (the book, the docs, the help, the mailing
> list archive -- <scotty beam me UP>) in the past two days convinced me
> to use the Zserver configuration.

It's the quickest thing to do to get a Zope installation up, and like I said
in my last email, if you use Apache as well, you can integrate it very
easily using VHM).

> Are you saying that out of the
> tarball 'box' so to speak the configuration is Zserver?

Yes, using the 
% python wo_pcgi.py
Installation setup.

> or do I have to
> do something special to select zserver.  is the zope start-up script
> placed into the /etc/rd.d/init.d directory on this install as well?
>

There's no special script supplied with the source distribution that goes
into the /etc/init.d area, I think that's because it's not to easy to do
this for all the platforms that Zope runs on. Someone wrote up a HOWTO on
the Zope site that gives a clue how to do this for some unixes.

> 
> I am learning Zope for a client that is considering zope for their
> corporate intranet - seems like it would be perfect for that - I will
> also be very interested to see how it increases productivity in perl/php
> development (languages of choice for 'sunday' programmer such as
> myself.)
> 

I think you're probably right. The permissions and security machinery in
Zope is extremely flexible, and the CMF is certainly something to consider
for an intranet. Zope isn't a language as such however, it's as the 'OPE'
part of its name suggests, an 'Object Publishing Environment'.
> 
> Warm regards from San Diego,
> 
> Nicole
> 
> PS - almost went to England for a visit this month - got cancelled
> <sigh>

You certainly don't want to come here at the moment - it's very very wet!
(eg check out the pictures from the 'trooping the colour' ceremony yesterday
at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1392000/1392006.stm).

Tone
-- 
Dr Tony McDonald,  Assistant Director, FMCC, http://www.fmcc.org.uk/
The Medical School, Newcastle University Tel: +44 191 243 6140
A Zope list for UK HE/FE  http://www.fmcc.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/zope