Add Reverse-Proxy authentication documentation (pull-request #202)

README.markdown

@@ -110,6 +110,7 @@ Documentation
 - [LDAP authentication](docs/ldap-authentication.markdown)
 - [Google authentication](docs/google-authentication.markdown)
 - [GitHub authentication](docs/github-authentication.markdown)
+- [Reverse proxy authentication](docs/reverse-proxy-authentication.markdown)
 
 #### Developers and sysadmins
 

docs/reverse-proxy-authentication.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+Reverse Proxy Authentication
+============================
+
+Requirements
+------------
+
+- A well configured reverse proxy (or Apache auth on the same server), that performs authentication and sends the authenticated username to Kanboard using a HTTP header. It is useful if you have yet some SSO (Single-Sign-On) in your organization, so you should know what your are doing.
+
+How does this work?
+-------------------
+
+- Your reverse proxy authenticates the user and adds a HTTP header containing its login to the request. The default header name or how to specify it should be in the reverse proxy documentation, however:
+  - If it is the same web server that runs Kanboard, the CGI spec specifies this header to be REMOTE_USER (see [RFC 3875](http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3875) §4.1.11). For example, Apache adds REMOTE_USER by default if `Require valid-user` is set. Note this header is only set for CGI (like PHP), and not if Apache is a reverse proxy to another Apache running Kanboard. It works the same with IIS and nginx according to their documentation.
+  - If it is a real reverse proxy, the HTTP ICAP extension draft spec proposes the header to be X-Authenticated-User (see [IETF draft spec §3.4](http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-stecher-icap-subid-00#section-3.4)). This de-facto standart has been adopted by a number of tools.
+- Kanboard retrieves the value of the specified HTTP header, and:
+  - if the user does not exist yet, creates it (it also checks if it is the default admin).
+  - authenticates the given user without any prompt, assuming it is valid (so it does NOT prompt the login page).
+
+
+Installation instructions
+-------------------------
+
+### Setting up your reverse proxy
+
+This is not in the scope of this documentation. You should check that the user login is sent by the reverse proxy using a HTTP header, and find which one.
+
+### Setting up Kanboad
+
+Create a custom `config.php` file or copy the `config.default.php` file:
+
+```php
+<?php
+
+// Enable/disable reverse proxy authentication
+define('REVERSE_PROXY_AUTH', true); // Set this value to true
+
+// The HTTP header to retrieve. If not specified, REMOTE_USER is the default
+define('REVERSE_PROXY_USER_HEADER', 'REMOTE_USER');
+
+// The default Kanboard admin for your organization.
+// Since everything should be filtered by the reverse proxy,
+// you should want to have a bootstrap admin user.
+define('REVERSE_PROXY_DEFAULT_ADMIN', 'myadmin');
+
+```