Authentication and Re-Authentication on Tomcat 4.1.24 for Authorization

[Robyne Vaughn <rv...@lubbockisd.org>]

In my server.xml, I have a JNDI realm which works for authenticating
every user against Microsoft Active Directory.  

 

The user requests a URL which I have set up as an alias in my web.xml
for a servlet which authenticates the user against the active directory
and then does a dispatcher.forward(request,response) to what is
essentially an opening page for the user.  (A menu of links to specific
programs.)

 

I am trying to implement further authorization for certain programs for
administrators.

 

If a person tries to open (I'm only testing 1 page at the moment) the
protected page, before doing the dispatcher.forward(request,response), I
rewrite the http header to be basic authentication in an effort to trick
Tomcat into re-authenticating for this page.

 

      response.setStatus(response.SC_UNAUTHORIZED); // Ie 401

      response.setHeader("WWW-AUTHENTICATE","BASIC");

     dispatcher.forward(request,response);

 

I have set up a context fragment similar to
tomcat_home/webapps/application.xml trying to set up the additional
authentication.

 

It wants to use the user database, and in fact, it does pop up the basic
login window after one has cleared the jndi authentication.  However,
after 3 attempts to login, it neither gives me a "bad password" message,
nor a "successful" message, instead after the 3 attempts, it just allows
the already authenticated user access whether or not they have been
assigned the appropriate role in the tomcat-users.xml.

 

Any ideas why it doesn't seem to be actually using the tomcat-users.xml?

It's a miracle that it's this close to working.  I'm feeling my way
through this, I'm not very experienced at Tomcat or Java or Jndi, I only
touch on them occasionally.  So, please answer in full, rich answers.

 

Robyne  Vaughn