Difficulties understanding aceserver access control

[Ed Griffiths]

Tim,

First things first.....a plea really to all bug/problem posters...

We always need to know the following:

	the output of running   "uname -a"  so we know what your machine is.

	which version of acedb you are using, for 4_8 you can simply
	type   "acedb_prog -version", for earlier versions its best to
	run xace and go to the "Admin->Program Status" window.


Second thing, unless you are very attached to the RPC server I would recommend
that you swop to the socket server available at:

	http://www.acedb.org/Software/Downloads/monthly.shtml

there is documentation at:


	http://www.acedb.org/Development/wdoc/SOCKET_aceserver.html

This server is going to be the only server distributed with the next public
release of AceDB and offers many advantages including:

	a proper user/password system not needing magic file directories

	direct access from AcePerl via the perl sockets package, no need for
	stub code as in the RPC server

	better debugging/control of the server


That said, if you want to stay with the RPC server then you will need to update
your copy to the 4_8 RPC server because the below looks like a bug that was
fixed some time ago in 4_8 but I don't know if this was fixed in 4_7.

cheers Ed

p.s. if you do decide to swop to the socket server then please do feel that you
can mail me direct because I look after the socket server and am keen to see it
accepted.

> 
> I'm having some difficulty working out how to control write access to an
> RPC ace server.
> 
> I want the ace server to only allow read access, and no write access at
> all.
> 
> So, in server.wrm, I have
> 
> READ_ACCESS_DIRECTORY PUBLIC
> 
> and
> 
> WRITE_ACCESS_DIRECTORY to a directory which no-one can read, since the
> server.wrm file says:
> 
> //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
> // WRITE ACCESS:
> // You must specify a directory that will be readable by
> // any client to which you want to grant access
> 
> So, presumably what happens now is that the client connects, the
> aceserver starts up, and then tries to write a file in
> WRITE_ACCESS_DIRECTORY and can't.  For some reason, this causes it to
> reject the ace client connection entirely.  This doesn't seem to be
> consistent with the documentation in server.wrm.
> 
> Can someone clarify for me?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Tim.

-- 
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| Ed Griffiths, Acedb development, Informatics Group,                    |
|               The Sanger Centre, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus,         |
|               Hinxton, Cambridge CB10 1SA, UK                          |
|                                                                        |
| email: edgrif at sanger.ac.uk  Tel: +44-1223-494780  Fax: +44-1223-494919 |
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