Junctioning Win32 Web Servers
The Access Manager WebSEAL server is able to junction to third-party
web servers by installing a simple program to discover the web
space of that server. The name of that program is
query_contents. This document describes how to install,
configure and customize the query_contents program for Win32
machines.
Packing List
The files required to install, configure and customize
query_contents for Win32 platforms are installed in the
<install-path>/www/lib/query_contents directory on
WebSEAL servers. The files in this directory are as
follows:
File |
Description |
query_contents.exe |
Main executable program for Win32 systems. It is installed in
the cgi-bin directory of the third-party web server. |
query_contents.c |
Source code for query_contents.exe. |
Makefile |
Microsoft Visual C++ compatible Makefile to build
query_contents.exe from query_contents.c. |
<LANG>/query_contents.html |
This help file. |
query_contents.cfg |
A sample configuration file which identifies the document root
for the web server. |
Installation and Configuration Instructions
- Ensure that the third-party web server has a CGI directory
correctly configured and mapped as /cgi-bin.
- Ensure that the CGI directory has the executable
attribute.
- Ensure that a valid document exists as the document root of the
third-party web server.
- Install query_contents.exe into the CGI directory of the
third-party web server
- Install query_contents.cfg in the Windows directory of the
Win32 machine. Default values for this directory are shown in the
table below:
Operating System |
Windows directory |
Windows 95
|
c:\windows
|
Windows NT 3.5x
|
c:\winnt35
|
Windows NT 4.x
|
c:\winnt
|
- Edit the query_contents.cfg file to correctly specify the
document root directory for the third-party web server. The file
currently contains sample entries for the Microsoft Internet
Information Server and Netscape FastTrack servers.
Remember that lines in this file that start with a semi-colon (;)
are comments, and ignored by the query_contents program.
Testing the Configuration
- From an MS-DOS prompt on the Win32 machine, execute the
query_contents program from the CGI directory as follows:
c:\inetsrv\wwwroot\cgi-bin>query_contents dirlist=/
You should see output like:
content-type: text/plain
100
index.html
cgi-bin//
pics//
If you do not see output like this, but see an error code,
then the configuration file is not in the correct place, or doesn't
contain a valid document root entry. Check the configuration of the
query_contents.cfg file, and make sure that the document root
exists.
- From a browser, enter the URL
http://<name of Win32
machine>/cgi-bin/query_contents.exe?dirlist=/
This should return the same result as the preceding step. If
it doesn't, the CGI configuration of your web server is not
correct. Consult the documentation for this server to rectify the
problem.
If these steps complete successfully, then you are ready to use
the Access Manager for e-business ACL Manager to create the junction from the
WebSEAL server.
Customization
The source code for the query_contents program is distributed
royalty-free with the Access Manager WebSEAL products. As well as the
source code in query_contents.c, a Makefile is supplied. This
Makefile was used with the Microsoft Visual C++ development system,
but should be compatible with any other Win32 development
environment.
Additional functionality could be added to this program to
support special features of some third-party web servers. These
features include:
- directory mapping, where a sub-directory not below the document
root is mapped into the web space.
- generation of a web space that is not file system based. This
might be the case for a database-hosted web server.