For an upcoming event, I've created a homegrown registration system with unique user IDs and logins. It's handling the basics of what I need well, but I'd also like to give registered participants access to a wiki for some pre-event coordination.
Does anyone know if it's possible to use the existing cookie that's set when my users login to control access to a mediawiki (or other wiki) installation? Either through built-in access control in the wiki software, or through some kind of .htaccess-level checking? I'd really prefer not to add a second level of authentication if I can avoid it, but I also don't want to depend on security through obscurity.
If you are using Apache (1.3 or 2.x), you could create a group file with all the names in a named group, one group per line. You can add 'Require valid-user' to your .htaccess if you every valid user should have access, and you do not wish yo have a group file.
See
Apache 1.3 "Authentication, Authorization, and Access Control" or
Apache 2.x "Authentication, Authorization, and Access Control"
I solved the problem by using phpwiki, and adding the authentication code from the main site to the top of the index.php file for the wiki. Yay!