Chapter 3 Setting Administration Preferences

This document describes the administration forms available via the Preferences and Global Settings tabs in the Administration Server that you use to configure your iPlanet Web Servers. Note that you must enable cookies in your browser to run the CGI programs necessary for configuring your server.

• Shutting Down the Administration Server
• Changing Network Settings
• Changing the Superuser Settings
• Enabling Distributed Administration
• Configuring Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
• Specifying Log File Options
• Configuring Directory Services
• Restricting Server Access

• Access the Administration Server, choose the Servers tab, and perform the following steps:

1. Select the Manage Servers option.
2. Select the server you want to shut down from the Select a Server drop-down list.
3. Click Manage. The iPlanet Web Server displays the Server Manager forms.

For more information about using the Server On/Off page, see Starting and Stopping the Server.

• Choose the Preferences tab, select the Shut Down option, and click Shut down the administration server! button. For more information, see The Shut Down Page.
• Use the Services window in the Control Panel (Windows NT).
• Use stop, which shuts down the server completely, interrupting service until it is restarted. If you set the etc/inittab file to automatically restart (using "respawn"), you must remove the line pertaining to the web server in etc/inittab before shutting down the server; otherwise, the server automatically restarts. (Unix/Linux platforms).

1. Access the Administration Server and choose the Preferences tab.
2. Click the Network Settings link.
3. Make the desired changes and click OK.

To change the superuser settings for the Administration Server, perform the following steps:

1. Access the Administration Server and choose the Preferences tab.
2. Click the Superuser Access Control link.
3. Make the desired changes and click OK.

• superuser is the user listed in the file server_root/admin-serv/config/admpw. This is the user name (and password) you specified during installation. This user has full access to all forms in the Administration Server, except the Users & Groups forms, which depend on the superuser having a valid account in an LDAP server such as Netscape Directory Server.
• administrators go directly to the Server Manager forms for a specific server, including the Administration Server. The forms they see depend on the access control rules set up for them (usually done by the superuser). Administrators can perform limited administrative tasks and can make changes that affect other users, such as adding users or changing access control.
• end users can view read-only data stored in the database. Additionally, end users may be granted access permissions to change only specific data.

1. Verify that you have installed a Directory Server.
2. Access the Administration Server.
3. One you've installed a Directory Server, you may also need to create an administration group, if you have not previously done so.

To create a group, perform the following steps:

1. Choose the Users & Groups tab.
2. Click the New Group link.
3. Create an "administrators" group in the LDAP directory and add the names of the users you want to have permission to configure the Administration Server, or any of the servers installed in its server root. All users in the "administrators" group have full access to the Administration Server, but you can use access control to limit the servers and forms they will be allowed to configure.

Warning.   Once you create an access-control list, the distributed administration group is added to that list. If you change the name of the "administrators" group, you must manually edit the access-control list to change the group it references.

• Choose the Preferences tab.
• Click the Distributed Admin link.
• Make the desired changes and click OK.
For more information, see The Distributed Administration Page.

1. Access the Administration Server and choose the Preferences tab.
2. Click the Encryption On/Off link.
3. Make the desired changes and click OK.

• Choose between various versions of SSL.
• Specify whether to require client certificates.


• Set the SSL 2.0 ciphers.


• Set the SSL 3.0 ciphers.

1. Access the Administration Server and choose the Preferences tab.
2. Click the Encryption Prefs link.
3. Check the SSL versions you want your server to communicate with. The latest and most secure version is SSL version 3, but a few older clients use only SSL version 2. You will probably want to enable your server to use both versions.
4. Check the ciphers you want your server to use. The ciphers are listed for each version of SSL. Some ciphers are more secure, or stronger, than others. Generally speaking, the more bits a cipher uses during encryption, the harder it is to decrypt the data. Ciphers are described after this list.
5. Click OK. Make sure you restart your server.

PathCheck fn="ssl-check" [secret-keysize=<nbits>] [bong-file=<filename>]

1. Access the Administration Server and choose the Preferences tab.
2. Click the Logging Options link.
3. Make the desired changes and click OK.

• Viewing the Access Log File
• Viewing the Error Log File
• Archiving Log Files

1. Access the Administration Server and choose the Preferences tab.
2. Click the View Access Log link and click OK.

1. Access the Administration Server and choose the Preferences tab.
2. Click the View Error Log link and click OK.

• Internal-daemon log rotation—this type of log rotation happens within the HTTP daemon, so the server doesn't need to restart.
• Cron-based log rotation—this type of log rotation is based on the time stored in the cron.conf file. For more information about cron controls, see Using Cron Controls (Unix/Linux).

1. Access the Administration Server and choose the Global Settings tab.
2. Click the Cron Control link.
3. Click Restart, Start, or Stop to change the cron controls.

1. Access the Administration Server and choose the Global Settings tab.
2. Click the Configure Directory Service link.
3. Make the desired changes and click OK.

1. Access the Administration Server and choose the Global Settings tab.
2. Click the Restrict Access link.
3. Select the desired server and click Edit ACL.

The Administration Server displays the access control rules for the server you specified.

4. Make the desired access control changes and click OK.