The Greenstone software comes equipped with an authentication system. Users can "Register" in the system, and can then access protected parts of the library, such as remote collection editing, online document editing (greenstone 3) and protected collections.

A special type of user called an "administrator" is able to manage users. Anyone can register as a user, but only administrators can assign groups to that user. Groups control which collections/activities a user is allowed access to.

<TABAREA tabs="Greenstone3,Greenstone2"> <TAB> To access this facility, click the Login button in the upper right corner of the interface and enter your username and password (the default is "admin" and "admin").

For more information on security in Greenstone 3, refer to Security in Greenstone Collections </TAB> <TAB> To access this facility, click the appropriate link on the front page.

</TAB></TABAREA>

The entry page gives information about each of the collections offered by the system. Note that all collections are included—for there may be “private” ones that do not appear on the Greenstone home page. With each is given its short name, full name, whether it is publicly displayed, and whether or not it is running. Clicking a particular collection's abbreviation brings up information about that collection, gathered from its collection configuration file and from other internal structures created for that collection. If the collection is both public and running, clicking the collection's full name (the second link) takes you to the collection itself.

The administrative facility also presents configuration information about the installation and allows it to be modified. It facilitates examination of the error logs that record internal errors, and the user logs that record usage. It enables a specified user (or users) to authorize others to build collections and add new material to existing ones.

Greenstone's user database is controlled by Administration Pages in the library. Admin users (users with the 'administrator' group set) can list users, edit their details (including which groups they belong to) and delete or create new ones. In addition, in greenstone 3, anyone can register themselves as a new user (although an administrator needs to set their groups).

Authentication of users is done by requesting a user name and password.

The current list of groups is as follows:

• administrator: Gives permission to access and change site configuration and user accounts.
• personal-collections-editor: Gives permission to create new personal collections
• <collection-name>-collection-editor: Gives permission to create and edit the "collection-name" collection, for example, reports-collection-editor.
• all-collections-editor: Gives permission to create new personal and global collections and edit all collections. Also gives permission to use the Collector (Greenstone 2).

When Greenstone is installed, there is one user called admin who belongs to both the administrator and all-collections-editor groups. The password for this user is set during the installation process (If you did not set a password during installation, the admin login will default to username = admin, password = admin).

For more details about user management, see the appropriate page for your Greenstone:

• Greenstone 3 User Management
• Greenstone 2 User Management

Once you have authenticated users, you can use features such as:

• User Comments - if this is enabled for a collection, logged in users can add comments to a document.
• Online Document Editing - In greenstone 3 you can enable web editing for documents. Here authenticated users (with collection editing privileges) can modify the metadata or text content of a document.

You can enable usage logging by setting the logcgiargs option to true in greenstone/etc/main.cfg. This saves a log in greenstone/etc/usage.txt. The log entry is basically a list of cgi arguments. One entry is generated for each page request to the library.

You can find out what the cgi arguments mean by going to the Administration page of your Greenstone installation, or from this page.

• The Formatting and Authentication demo collection uses authentication.