Forum OpenACS Q&A: User Authentication -- how to make it required (for fs_stuff)

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1: User Authentication -- how to make it required (for fs_stuff)
Posted by Tim The Evil on 05/17/01 11:27 PM
How can I make it so that new users must be approved prior to adding
content?  In order to charge for things, we'd like to manually
approve users' contributions (we have some BIG pipes running into our
datacenter and have basically crushed our local competitors, so we'd
like to sell people the ability to do high-quality video and
presentations for a reasonable fee, thus financing expansion and
offering a useful service at a reduced rate).

I can't seem to find the switch to change individual functions (eg.
file storage, user homepages, etc) or even overall user registration
so that anyone who isn't accountable, is unable to put stuff on the
server until we approve them.

As a corollary to this, am I going to have to write my own LOB access
routines if I want Real or Netshow or Quicktime servers to be able to
unpickle contributed content?  It's not a big deal, but if I am
wasting time on a solved problem, I'd prefer to work on something
else and use an existing solution.

So,

1) how can I make it so that users must be approved to contribute?
2) is there an uncooked-file-storage module suitable for streaming?

Thanks,

tim

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2: Response to User Authentication -- how to make it required (for fs_stuff) (response to 1)
Posted by Don Baccus on 05/18/01 12:55 AM
New-file-storage stores directly in the operating system's filesystem so is more appropriate for streaming large files than storing them in the database.  This complicates the backup process slightly, though.

We do have a LOB interface in the driver but it's not terribly efficient.  We avoid Postgres LOBs because until recently they weren't  dumpable by pg_dump - my driver solution is slower but allowed for consistent data dumps back when PG couldn't do it with LOBs.

PG  7.2 will have a real BLOB similar to what you see in other dbs but that's a good six months out...

Restricting users?  Look for the filter that implements the parameter RestrictEntireServer (or something like that).  You can use that as a template for a filter you set up for specific paths, i.e. "/new-file-storage/*"

User registration can be configured via the config file to require admin approval, to require e-mail confirmation, etc.