NodeBrain TM Webster Module Tutorial

Congratulations! By displaying this page in your web browser, you have successfully completed the first step of the Webster section of the NodeBrain Tutorial.   Your webster1 script looks like this.

    #!/usr/bin/nb -d            
    # File: tutorial/Webster/webster1
    -rm log/webster.log
    set log="log/webster.log";
    define webster node webster;
    webster. define uri cell "http://0.0.0.0:62443";
    webster. define Authenticate cell "no";
    

User Authentication

Since the goal of Webster is to provide an administrator interface to a NodeBrain agent, the host caboodle, and perhaps the host system, we need to implement user authentication and authorization to use administrator features. Otherwise Webster will only display content like a normal insecure web server. You have a couple options.

Exploring the Webster Interface

Now that you have a little security in place, you should be able to access the Webster interface, which not only pretends to be a web server, but also pretends to be a web CGI application. The interface is accessed with URL's having a path starting with a colon followed by a request.

    http://hostname:port/:request
The Webster interface provides a minimal capability to peek inside an agent, issue commands to the agent, browse files and issue shell commands. A tool called the NodeBrain Planner is being packaged for release that provides a CGI interface to manage NodeBrain rules as a collection of "plans" stored as XML files. This tool can run under Webster or an Apache web server. The point here is that Webster is not intended to be a complete interface for NodeBrain application administration, just one of a few.

If you find yourself repeating Webster requests frequently, you can set bookmarks in your browser, or use Webster bookmarks. Use the "Bookmarks" menu item in Webster to display your bookmarks.


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