Re: UNIX Logins by Proxy Over the Web

The web server that the clients would initially use is
not under my control but the UNIX application would hopefully
be.

If the initial web server is not under your control, but the UNIX
server is, why not install a web server on the UNIX machine?
That would be the cleanest, fastest way to do this. I think that
initiating SSH sessions through code-behind could work, but won't be
as easy to troubleshoot when it breaks, and IMHO is more likely to do
so. Installing a web server on the UNIX machine would allow you to
pass all your information from one server to the next through
encrypted querystrings. This could then be decrypted and piped into
your program using a fairly simple CGI script.


The way I imagine it, when a client clicks a link,
he/she triggers the server to ssh to an account on the UNIX
system where they begin running my application by default, in
other words, that's all you can do there. When finished, the
connection drops.

I am thinking this should be relatively easy for the web
developers to implement but do not know enough about web state
of the art to do it myself.

The UNIX part is something I certainly can do so what I
am trying to do is divide and conquer as far as the scope of the
problem.

I want to tell the web developers, "Just get them here
to this user ID on this system and I'll take care of the rest."

If the web application that connects the user to the
UNIX system can mine the user's IP address and possibly even his
Ethernet address and pass them as variables, this would be
fabulous.

Basically, I know anything is possible but is this
practical? The clients will mostly be running Windows and will
probably not even have any idea they are dealing with a UNIX
system. They will just answer what questions we don't already
have answers to.

Thanks for constructive suggestions as this is presently
only in the planning stage.

Obviously, the UNIX application needs to instantly die or
ignore control characters so that it can't be hijacked.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK
Systems Engineer
OSU Information Technology Department Network Operations Group


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