## TWiki Authentication 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. [[TWikiDocumentation]] 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 **%WIKIUSERNAME%** 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 **$doRememberRemoteUser** flag in **TWiki.cfg**. TWiki persistently stores the IP address / username pairs in file **$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%. -- [[PeterThoeny]] - 16 Mar 2001