Creating a Web Site authentication realm document

Using an IBM® Domino® Web Site authentication realm, you can specify the text string that appears when a user tries to access a certain directory, or file on a Domino Web server. When the browser prompts the user for a name and password, the browser's authentication dialog displays the text string. The browser uses the realm to determine which credentials -- that is, user name and password -- to send with the URL for subsequent requests. The Domino Web server caches the user's credentials to use for different realms, in order to avoid prompting the user repeatedly for the same credentials.

About this task

The realm string also applies to requests mapped to paths that have the specified path as their root, provided that the child paths of the root do not already have a specified realm. For example, the realm string specified for D:\NOTES\DATA also applies to a request mapped to D:\NOTES\DATA\FINANCE, if the latter does not have a realm specification.

If there is no realm specification for a given path, Domino uses the path from the request as a realm string.

If you are using Web Site documents, you can create a Web Site Authentication Realm document for a specific Web Site document. The Authentication Realm document appears as a response document to the Web Site document in the Internet Sites view.

Procedure

  1. From the Domino Administrator, choose Configuration > Web > Internet Sites.
  2. Choose the Web Site document for which you want to create an authentication realm, and click Edit Document.
  3. Click Web Site and choose Create Authentication Realm.
  4. Click the Basics tab and complete the following fields:
    Table 1. Basics tab fields

    Field

    Action

    Description

    Enter a name that differentiates this document from others you create.

    Directory or file path

    Enter the name of the path that you want to protect. It should be in either the fully-qualified path format, which includes the drive letter; for example, use c:\domino\data\domino\cgi-bin, or the relative path to the server's data directory for example, domino\cgi-bin.

    Realm label returned to browser

    Enter a text string that describes the location on the server or any other descriptive string, which will be used as the realm that is displayed to the user and stored by the browser. This string should not contain any accented or international characters, because they will not be displayed correctly by the browser.

    The browser displays the text string whenever there is an authentication or authorization failure at the location. The text appears in the browser's authentication dialog.

  5. Save and close the document.
  6. Enter this command at the console so that the settings take effect:

    tell http refresh