auth.html #1

<TITLE>Passwords and P4Web</TITLE>

<p> When you point your browser to your P4Web in <a href="helper?help">Standard 
  mode</a>, you are prompted for a username and password. 
You might subsequently be prompted to reauthenticate for any of the following reasons:
<ul>
  <li> After logging out</li>
  <li>P4Web has been restarted</li>
  <li>Your ticket expired </li>
  <li> You changed your password using another Perforce client application </li>
  <li> You restarted your browser and you are a remote user or a local user who has not logged in for a week</li>
  <li>You have never logged in before using this browser</li>
  <li>You deleted the login information from the P4Web URL in the 
    Address bar of your browser </li>
</ul>
<p> If you are using P4Web in <a href="browseonly?help">Viewer mode</a>, you are 
  not typically required to enter a password when you start P4Web. However, your 
  Perforce administrator might have set up the P4Web Viewer at your site to require 
  one. 
<h4>Username restrictions</h4>
<p> In Standard mode, enter the username that matches the one P4Web was started 
  up with. Normally, this is the same as your system login or account username. 
  If you do not know your Perforce username, you can go to the command-line and 
  use the <kbd><b>p4 set</b></kbd> command to view the value of P4USER. 
<h4>The importance of passwords</h4>
<p> If your Perforce username has no password associated with it (which is likely 
  if you're using Perforce for the first time), it doesn't matter what you type 
  in your browser's password prompt. <a href="edituser?help">Edit your user spec</a> 
  immediately after you connected with P4Web (Standard mode) to create a Perforce 
  password for your username. The password is stored by the Perforce server. 
<p> A Perforce password prevents others users from using your P4Web and your other 
  Perforce client programs (P4V, command line, etc.) If your username doesn't 
  have a Perforce password, anyone can connect their browser to your P4Web (or 
  any other Perforce client programs) and run commands that view and write files 
  in your workspace. 
<p> After you've created a Perforce password by editing your user spec, use that 
  password in your browser's username/password prompt. If you enter the wrong 
  password in the prompt, P4Web displays a Perforce password error message displayed 
  in your browser. The message contains a link that you can click to redisplay 
  the username/password prompt. 
<h4>Password format</h4>
<p> Depending on the settings of the Perforce Server that you are connecting to, 
  the following password format might be required: 
<ul>
<li>The password must be mixed case or contain non-alphabetic characters
  <li>The password must be at least eight characters in length 
</ul>


<h4>Changing your Perforce password</h4>
<p> Your browser uses the same password every time it communicates with P4Web. 
  If you change your Perforce password, either by <a href="edituser?help">editing 
  your user spec</a> in P4Web, or with another Perforce client program, P4Web 
  displays Perforce password errors when attempting subsequent operations. To 
  redisplay the browser username/password prompt and enter your new password, 
  click on the link in the error message. 
<h4>Passwords in the environment</h4>
<p> Perforce passwords set in the environment on Windows and Unix are ignored 
  by P4Web. Such settings include values in the registry, shell variables, configuration 
  variables, and values passed with the <kbd><b>-P</b></kbd> flag on the <b>p4web</b> 
  startup command. (See <a href="index?help">How to Use P4Web</a> for information 
  about the <b>p4web</b> startup command.) You must enter your Perforce password 
  at your browser's prompt to begin using P4Web. 
<h4>P4Web and P4CONFIG</h4>
<p> If the <b>p4web</b> program is started up in an environment with a <tt>P4CONFIG</tt> 
  value set, it reads Perforce configuration parameters, including client name, 
  user name, and Perforce Server port address, from the file specified by <tt>P4CONFIG</tt>. 
  The <b>p4web</b> program rereads the config file every time it receives a request 
  from a your browser. If you modify your <tt>P4CONFIG</tt> file while P4Web is 
  running, you affect your P4Web's default configuration parameters. (<tt>P4CONFIG</tt> 
  is discussed in more detail in the <i>Perforce Command Reference</i> found on 
  the <a href=http://www.perforce.com/perforce/technical.html>Perforce Documentation</a> 
  web page.)