Using MTU ISO
The student organization server is equipped with the required module that will allow you to protect areas of your site using the Michigan Tech Univerisity Initial Sign-On password, or MTU ISO passoword, for short. Setting up MTU ISO is a little complicated, but I'll do my best to explain it.
The first thing you need to do is register your site, application, or service to get an MTU ISO ID number. You can do this by visiting the MTU ISO Application Registration site. Note that you will have to login, using your MTU ISO login ID and password, to register. Once you have filled out everything write down the application ID you are given.
Now you need to create what is called a public and private key pair. This gets into digital encryption technology which is more math than computer related. Fortunately we provid a web application you can use to Generate a public/private key pair.
You will need to save the PRIVATE KEY and CERTIFICATE (also called the public key) to two separate files. These files will need to get to the web server at some point, via SFTP, or whatever transfer method you currently use. I recommend putting them in a directory named mtuiso in your home directory, NOT in your public_html folder. Remember the passphrase you used for the private key! We'll need it later.
We should now have all of the pieces we need to create the final
file. This is the .htaccess file. The .htaccess file goes in the
folder with the data you want to protect. The web server reads this
file before doing anything else so you can tell it if you want it
to do something special, like make sure someone has logged into the MTU ISO system before seeing your data. Again, some nice person has
provided a web application to help you
Create a .htaccess file for use with MTU ISO. The fields with "*"
by them are required.
The Global Cookie Name and Local Cookie Name cannot be the same.
The Global Public Certificate file is always
/usr/local/mtuiso/mtuca.crt for you.
You should uncheck the Local Cookie Secure box, unless you have a
server certificate. If you don't know what that is, uncheck the box.
The Local Private CA key is the path to the file you stored the
private key in, on the server. It is likely something like
/home/
The Local Private CA Passphrase is the passphrase for the key I told
you to remember earlier.
The Local Public CA cert is the path to the file you stored the
public key in, on the server. It is likely something like
/home/
If you are uncertain about a field that is not required, just leave
it blank.
The Require directives you are allowed to use on this server are
valid-user and User. If you choose User, you must provide a list
of MTU userids allowed to see the content. Any MTU userid can be
used.
The generated text can be cut and paste into a text file named ".htaccess", without the quotes. The .htaccess file must be placed in the directory with the content you wish to protect and it must be named .htaccess.
If you have questions after following the above steps please contact studentorg@mtu.edu.
For more information about the MTU ISO system please visit the MTU ISO Information site.