RATS.CGI Details

The "rats.cgi" client is the replacement of makeacct and makeclass. This is the only user accessible interface. It requires a web server which supports CGI. The user is presented with a series of screens which collect personal information, create usernames and passwords if required and prompts the user for email change in the PDB if necessary. More about these processes is documented in the Client Internals doc. The one interesting configuration option which affects rats.cgi is the "web_display" variable which can be customized to control if each account type is displayed through the web interface or not. Futher more, the WEB_DEFAULT_ACCT variable controls which account type will be the default selected one.

Note that the forms generated also contain a number of javascrip timeouts which will automaticaly close the windows (if self generated) or prompt the user for window close (if linked in). Also, the provided "Exit" button will close the window. This feature is present so web browsers running in kiosk mode can exit and time out, hopefully preserving some ammount of user privacy as well as keeping careless/malicious lab users from locking up machines.