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

  1. Ensure that the third-party web server has a CGI directory correctly configured and mapped as /cgi-bin.
  2. Ensure that the CGI directory has the executable attribute.
  3. Ensure that a valid document exists as the document root of the third-party web server.
  4. Install query_contents.exe into the CGI directory of the third-party web server
  5. Install query_contents.cfg in the Windows directory of the Win32 machine. Default values for this directory are shown in the table below:
  6. Operating System Windows directory

    Windows 95

    c:\windows

    Windows NT 3.5x

    c:\winnt35

    Windows NT 4.x

    c:\winnt

  7. 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

  1. 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.
  2. 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:

  1. directory mapping, where a sub-directory not below the document root is mapped into the web space.
  2. generation of a web space that is not file system based. This might be the case for a database-hosted web server.