Access Control Bridge - File Formats

These file formats define the layout of the two files used by the ACB application. These files will be obsolete (and removed) when the ACS application is completed and released. Both of these files are plain ASCII text files that will be located in the PICS\Config filder and may be edited with NotePad or any other text editor. You must not use a word processor on these files as the binary data structures included in word processor files will confuse and possibly crash ACB.

Address Map

The name of the address map file is "Address.Map" and it must be located in the PICS\Config folder.

The address map contains a list of internal LAN IP addresses and their external WAN counterparts. Each bridge system will contain two network interfaces, one connected to the PICS LAN and one connected to the corporate WAN. All of the PICS system management functions deal with the PICS LAN addresses. This file is used to map the addresses contained within the internal data structures to their WAN counterparts, for use by WAN clients. The ACB will not pass any addresses which are not listed in the map file to WAN clients, but an address may be mapped to itself. Self remapping is intended for use with internal clients only.

The file format is as follows:

; Any blank line or line whose first character is a
; semi-colon is a comment.

; PICS LAN     Corporate WAN     Description/Comments
192.168.1.1     148.152.92.104     Bridge-1-A
192.168.1.2     148.152.92.105     Bridge-1-B
192.168.1.3     148.152.92.106     Bridge-2-A
192.168.1.5     148.152.92.108     Bridge-3-A
192.168.1.10    148.152.92.120     PDRS-A
192.168.1.11    148.152.92.121     PDRS-B

Any non-comment (and non-blank) lines must contain two entries (the third is optional): the PICS LAN address and the Corporate WAN address, both IP addresses must be in standard decimal notation (as shown above). Anything following the second address is considered as a comment and may be used for the node name or other descriptive information.

The verification server must be located on a node listed in the map file in order to be reported to the WAN clients. Multiple verification servers are not supported.

User Database

The authorized user database is contained in a file named "PicsUser.Dat" and located in the PICS\Config folder.

The file looks like this:

; Any blank line or line whose first character is a
; semi-colon is a comment.

steve:mypassword:oper,tech,user,admin
howard:hispassword:tech,disable
brook:yourpassword:admin
user:user:user
oper:oper:oper
tech:tech:tech
admin:admin:admin
uo:uo:user,oper
to:to:tech,oper
tu:tu:tech,user
ao:ao:admin,oper
au:au:admin,user
at:at:admin,tech
ato:ato:admin,tech,oper
atu:atu:admin,tech,user
aou:aou:admin,oper,user
toa:toa:tech,oper,user
atou:atou:admin,tech,oper,user

Each non-blank, non-comment line contains three fields, separated by colons. NOTE: spaces should not be included on user definition lines. The three fields are: user name, password, and access rights. The user name is not case-sensitive, however, passwords are case-sensitive. The access rights field may contain a comma separated list of rights from the following list:

Right/Flag Description
user Generic user
ope Operator
tech Technician
admin System Administrator
disable Disabled account
developer Developer Access - allows user to modify the task control settings used by ACC (stored in the AccTasks.INI file).
change Password must be changed before further access is granted
change=yyyymmdd Optional form of a password change requirement, including an expiration date upon which the password must be changed.
expire=yyyymmdd Account expires on given date.

Anything which is not in the list above will be ignored. Any and/or all of the rights may be combined and they may be listed in any order. The disable right is handled differently from the others. When a user is disabled, he will not be granted any access rights and any other rights listed (valid or otherwise) will be ignored.

With the current implementation, any access rights is equivalent to all access rights, since neither the service providers nor the communications manager have been updated to enforce access control. Those things will be implemented after the ACC/ACB/ACS suite is complete.