[Seaside-dev] Initialize /seaside/config with random password?

[Dale Henrichs]

Philippe Marschall wrote:

>Hi
>
>I wanted to open this for discussion:
>
>Right now the configuration application has no password. One of the
>reasons for this is that we want the code to load without user
>interaction. This troubles we because even today there are publicly
>accessible Seaside applications online that have default username and
>password.
>
>A possible solution for this would be to set the password to a random
>one during loading. Then the user would have to use WAAdmin to set the
>password to something he knows. AFAIK several other web frameworks use
>this approach.
>
>Cheers
>Philippe
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>  
>
To go down a slightly different path. To be safe the users need to 
change more than just the password.

More than once, I've wanted a single "button" that I could press that 
would turn on "production mode." Production mode would turn off the tool 
bar (leaving the development tools intact) in _all_ applications. 
Production mode would switch the error handler to a production ready 
error handler - a simple error message and a stack dumped to a log - for 
all _all_ applications. "Production mode" could also refuse to server up 
the config page and could even disable the default page for seaside (the 
browser). Inspectors and _all_ other 'dangerous' development tools would 
become password protected in production mode.

The button for production mode could be on the top-level dispatcher. 
Once you've pressed the production mode button, you have to execute a 
smalltalk expression to disable production mode.

When not in production mode, the system is as wide open as it is now, 
but with a single button press your application becomes _SAFE_ for 
exposure to the web. This shouldn't affect folks that already know what 
they are doing, but should make it possible for newbies to avoid 
shooting themselves in the foot.

BTW, my motivation fot the single button, is to make it easy to switch 
back and forth between  production mode and development mode to make it 
easy to do testing.

Dale