[thelist] LAN search tool

Hassan Schroeder hassan at webtuitive.com
Wed Dec 12 18:14:33 CST 2001


spinhead wrote:

> We have a Windows NT/2000, Unix, Linux, and Network Appliance (shared
> Win/*nix box) and are looking for a tool to index these types of files for
> full-text searching, maintaining user permissions even in the search
> results:*

> *As in, we know if the user sees results but tries to access something he
> doesn't have at least read access to, he'll be denied. We don't even want
> them to see it in the search results. SiteServer does this well for Windows
> only implementations.
> 
> Am I dreaming?

There are lots of search engines that can index all the common file
formats, but I think the permissions thing is a bigger hurdle. 

Seems like you'd need to 

1) have your user/group identities synchronized across all platforms

2) index via the *file systems*, not HTTP spidering, in order to get 
     those file permission properties

3) rewrite your indexes to return HTTP URLs rather than file URLs
   (unless your users actually are accessing your content via some 
    massive Windows-shared-volumes/NFS/samba-fest!)   

4) interface your search engine to your directory (LDAP or ?) to be
   able to mask results based on user/group ID ...

Sounds like an interesting project, actually :-) though there's 
probably a pricey "enterprise" solution available from Autonomy or
Verity or somesuch ...

HTH!
-- 
H*
Hassan Schroeder ----------------------------- hassan at webtuitive.com 
Webtuitive Design ===  (+1) 408-938-0567   === http://webtuitive.com

    -- creating dynamic Web sites and applications since 1994 --




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