World Wide Web at nikhef.nl

General info

NIKHEF offers World Wide Web (HTTP) service at the machine www.nikhef.nl .

NIKHEF homepage

The NIKHEF homepage can be invoked via the URL

This gives you a side frame with various selectable categories, and a main frame with an introductory page.

All public information is available via the syntax

This corresponds to a hierarchically organized data store, which is visible in the UNIX filesystem at NIKHEF via the symbolic notation "/www/pub/category/...". The WWW maintainers must use this syntax for local access to their files and directories.

In principle all data must be contained within the /www directory tree. Symbolic links that point to data outside the tree are in general not followed, unless they refer to files or directories that are owned by the owner of the link.

The /www directory tree must be world readable in order to be visible. In general, directories must have access mode 755, and files must have access mode 644.

Personal homepages

NIKHEF users with a UNIX login account can make their own personal homepage. Such homepage can be accessed via the URL

This corresponds to a subdirectory public_html which must be present in the top of the UNIX home directory /user/login of the account login. The initial start page corresponds to a file index.html located within the public_html directory.

In principle all data must be contained within that directory and its subdirectories. Symbolic links that point to data outside the public_html directory tree are in general not followed, unless they refer to files or directories that are owned by the same user.

The public_html directory tree must be world readable in order to be visible. In general, directories must have access mode 755, and files must have access mode 644. Since the public_html directory resides within the home directory, also the home directory itself must be world readable with access mode 755.

Access control

If NIKHEF users want to protect a WWW directory so that the pages therein are only accessible for certain users after supplying a password, the following setup is recommended.

  1. Create a http password file in the top of your home directory, with the name .htpasswd and make sure it is world readable. This password file will contain entries of the form

    username : passwd

    in which username is an arbitrary name, and passwd is the associated encrypted password. Entries in this file are added or changed via the htpasswd command. Just create an empty file before you do this for the first time.
  1. In the WWW directory that you want protected, create a file with the name .htaccess and make sure it is world readable. This access file should contain the following

    AuthName   description
    AuthType   Basic
    AuthUserFile   / user / login / . htpasswd
    <Limit GET>
    Require user username
    </Limit>

    In which description describes the directory you want to protect (usually the name of the directory), login is your own login (account) name, and username is the name of a user in the http password file who will get access after supplying the associated password.

URL syntax

  1. The URL for the http protocol has the following syntax

in which hostname is the fully qualified domain name (or possibly IP address) of an http server. An explicit port number may be necessary if the server listens to a different port than the default port 80. pathname is a pathname at that server, relative to the start of its www repository.

In case an HTML document refers to another document on the same server, the protocol and hostname may be omitted, just leaving the pathname. If no leading slash is present, it is relative to the current directory where the referring HTML document resides. Otherwise, it is relative to the start of the www repository on the server.

If the rightmost component of the pathname specifies a file, that file will be retrieved. If it is a directory, the server looks for a file with a fixed name, usually index.html , within that directory. If it doesn't exist, a listing will be produced of that directory.

An optional suffix #marker to a filename causes the file to be displayed starting at the anchor that defines the marker. Otherwise, the file will be displayed from the top.

If the filename refers to a cgi-bin script, optional parameters may be appended to be interpreted by that script. The syntax for specifying such parameters is not explained here.

  1. The URL for the ftp protocol has the following syntax

in which hostname is the fully qualified domain name (or possibly IP address) of an anonymous ftp server. pathname is a pathname at that server, relative to the start of its ftp repository.

If the rightmost component of the pathname specifies a file, that file will be retrieved. If it is a directory, a listing will be produced of that directory.

  1. The URL for the mailto protocol has the following syntax

in which address is an e-mail address in any legal RFC822 format, but it is usually specified as a plain localname@domainname internet address.

CGI scripts

The execution of cgi-bin scripts and programs is restricted to the webmaster only, and is in general prohibited from use in personal homepages. Utilities that are often used may be installed by the webmaster in the NIKHEF cgi-bin directory.

about this document: Last modified: Monday, 15 March 2004 @ 14:48:21
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