P4Web Release 2012.1 User Guide
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Passwords and P4Web

When you point your browser to your P4Web in Standard mode, you are prompted for a username and password. You might subsequently be prompted to reauthenticate for any of the following reasons:

If you are using P4Web in Viewer mode, you are not typically required to enter a password when you start P4Web. However, your Perforce administrator might have set up the P4Web Viewer at your site to require one.

Username restrictions

In Standard mode, enter the username that matches the one P4Web was started up with. Normally, this is the same as your system login or account username. If you do not know your Perforce username, you can go to the command-line and use the p4 set command to view the value of P4USER.

The importance of passwords

If your Perforce username has no password associated with it (which is likely if you're using Perforce for the first time), it doesn't matter what you type in your browser's password prompt. Edit your user spec immediately after you connected with P4Web (Standard mode) to create a Perforce password for your username. The password is stored by the Perforce server.

A Perforce password prevents others users from using your P4Web and your other Perforce client programs (P4V, command line, etc.) If your username doesn't have a Perforce password, anyone can connect their browser to your P4Web (or any other Perforce client programs) and run commands that view and write files in your workspace.

After you've created a Perforce password by editing your user spec, use that password in your browser's username/password prompt. If you enter the wrong password in the prompt, P4Web displays a Perforce password error message displayed in your browser. The message contains a link that you can click to redisplay the username/password prompt.

Password format

Depending on the settings of the Perforce Server that you are connecting to, the following password format might be required:

Changing your Perforce password

Your browser uses the same password every time it communicates with P4Web. If you change your Perforce password, either by editing your user spec in P4Web, or with another Perforce client program, P4Web displays Perforce password errors when attempting subsequent operations. To redisplay the browser username/password prompt and enter your new password, click on the link in the error message.

Passwords in the environment

Perforce passwords set in the environment on Windows and Unix are ignored by P4Web. Such settings include values in the registry, shell variables, configuration variables, and values passed with the -P flag on the p4web startup command. (See How to Use P4Web for information about the p4web startup command.) You must enter your Perforce password at your browser's prompt to begin using P4Web.

P4Web and P4CONFIG

If the p4web program is started up in an environment with a P4CONFIG value set, it reads Perforce configuration parameters, including client name, user name, and Perforce Server port address, from the file specified by P4CONFIG. The p4web program rereads the config file every time it receives a request from a your browser. If you modify your P4CONFIG file while P4Web is running, you affect your P4Web's default configuration parameters. (P4CONFIG is discussed in more detail in the Perforce Command Reference found on the Perforce Documentation web page.)


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