The following is probably off topic, but I hope someone on the list has some good ideas on how to handle a problem I'm facing. I would like to protect multiple application servers of different technology (but including quixote with various httpds) behind a reverse proxy that centrally manages authentication (in a complex scenario with several different kinds of smartcards as well as Basic Auth) and access control. The reverse proxy is simply Apache 2.0 running mod-rewrite and mod-ssl. My problem is that I would like to find a way for authentication information to propagate from the reverse proxy to the application servers. Ideally, an application should see the same as it would with HTTP Basic Authentication to keep it all as standard as possible. Also, it would be nice to reduce as much as possible modifications to the application server's http daemons. That way, it would be easier to support a wide range of technologies (medusa, twisted, apache, ... for quixote..). In some experiments with Apache 2.0, I tried the RequestHeader directive of mod-headers. While it should work, I haven't managed to use the env. variable REMOTE_USER as value yet. But this could be a valid mechanism to propagate data from the proxy to the app server. I haven't tried yet whether mod-headers can be used to set REMOTE_USER or whether a specialized handler is neede for this. Many thanks in advance for any direction, ideas, and (obviously) solutions. cheers -bud -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------- Ing. Bud P. Bruegger, Ph.D. +39-0564-488577 (voice), -21139 (fax) Servizio Elaborazione Dati e-mail: bud@comune.grosseto.it Comune di Grosseto http://www.comune.grosseto.it/cie/ Via Ginori, 43 http://OpenPortalGuard.sf.net 58100 Grosseto (Tuscany, Italy) jabber: bud@amessage.info Free Software in Public Administration: not just a good idea, but a necessity Perfection is attained, not when there is nothing more to be added, but when there is nothing more to be taken away -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery