TWiki does not authenticate users internally, it depends on the `REMOTE_USER` environment variable. This variable is set when you enable basic authentication or authentication via SSL (https protocol)

TWiki keeps track who made changes to topics at what time. This gives a complete audit trail of changes.

No special installation steps need to be performed in case the server is already autenticated. If not you can opt for one of these:

* Forget about authentication. All changes will be registered as %MAINWEB%.TWikiGuest user, e.g. you can't tell who made changes.
* Use basic authentication for the `edit` and `attach` scripts. [TWiki Installation](TWikiDocumentation#installation) tells you more about that.
* Use SSL to authenticate and secure the whole server.

The `REMOTE_USER` environment variable is only set for the scripts that are under authentication. If for example the `edit`, `save` and `preview` scripts are authenticated, but not `view`, you would get your [[WikiName]] in `preview` for the <code>%WIKIUSERNAME%</code> variable, but `view` will show `TWikiGuest` instead of your WikiName.

There is a way to tell TWiki to remember the user for the scripts that are not authenticated, e.g. for the case where the `REMOTE_USER` environment variable is not set. TWiki can be configured to remember the IP address / username pair whenever an authentication happens (edit topic, attach file). Once remembered, the non authenticated scripts like `view` will show the correct username instead of `TWikiGuest`. You can enable this by setting the `$doRememberRemoteUser` flag in `wikicfg.pm`. TWiki persistently stores the IP address / username pairs in file `$remoteUserFilename`, which is `"$dataDir/remoteusers.txt"` by default. Please note that this can fail in case the IP address changes due to dynamically assigned IP addresses or proxy servers. Test: You are %WIKIUSERNAME%.

-- [[Main/PeterThoeny]] - 02 Nov 2000 <br />