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+External authentication with SemanticScuttle
+============================================
+
+Most times, one piece of software is only a part in the big puzzle
+that makes the software landscape of a company or organization.
+SemanticScuttle is not different and should integrate as nicely as
+possible with all other systems.
+
+One of the basic tasks of integration is user authentication against
+a central database - be it a central user database, an LDAP or a
+active directory server.
+
+Since version 0.96, SemanticScuttle supports user authentication against
+external systems. To provide a wide range of supported systems, we chose
+to utilize PEAR's Authentication package [1].
+It does this by providing different "authentication containers" [2],
+for example Database, IMAP, LDAP, POP3, RADIUS, SAP and SOAP.
+
+Please be aware of the fact that, after successful authentication, the user
+and his scrambled password are stored in the SemanticScuttle database.
+This is required for proper functioning of the software. It does not mean
+that you will be able to login if your external authentication provider
+is offline - you won't, execpt you switch it off in the SemanticScuttle
+configuration.
+
+
+[1] http://pear.php.net/package/Auth
+[2] http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.authentication.auth.intro-storage.php
+
+
+Basic configuration
+===================
+The default configuration file data/config.default.php has an own section
+on auth options and an explanation of the single entries.
+
+To utilize the external authentication, you need to install the
+PEAR Auth package:
+ $ pear install auth
+If you do not have a PEAR installation available, you can try to manually
+install the files in the src/ directory. If you choose to do that, the
+src/ directory should look similar to that:
+
+ src/
+  Auth.php
+  Auth/
+   Anonymous.php
+   Container.php
+   Container/
+    ..
+  SemanticScuttle/
+   header.php
+   ..
+
+After that, modify your data/config.php file. The most important change
+is to use
+ $serviceoverrides['User'] = 'SemanticScuttle_Service_AuthUser';
+which tells SemanticScuttle to switch to the special authentication service.
+
+Now that's done, you can configure the single auth options:
+ $authType = 'MDB2';
+selects the authentication container.
+
+ $authOptions
+is an array of options specific to the authentication container. Please
+consult the PEAR Auth documentation for more information.
+
+ $authDebug = true;
+should be used when setup fails, since it may give important hints
+where it fails. Please note that login will seem to fail with
+debugging activated. Going back to the main page after that will
+show that you are logged in.
+
+
+
+Authentication examples
+=======================
+
+General database authentification
+---------------------------------
+Here you also need the PEAR MDB2 package.
+The "new_link" option is important!
+
+config.php settings:
+-8<------------------
+$serviceoverrides['User'] = 'SemanticScuttle_Service_AuthUser';
+$authType = 'MDB2';
+$authOptions = array(
+    'dsn' => array(
+        'phptype'  => 'mysql',
+        'hostspec' => 'FIXME',
+        'username' => 'FIXME',
+        'password' => 'FIXME',
+        'database' => 'FIXME',
+        'new_link' => true,
+    ),
+    'table'       => 'usersFIXME',
+    'usernamecol' => 'usernameFIXME',
+    'passwordcol' => 'passwordFIXME',
+    'cryptType'   => 'md5',
+);
+-8<------------------
+
+
+Mantis Bugtracker
+-----------------
+Here you also need the PEAR MDB2 package.
+
+config.php settings:
+-8<------------------
+$serviceoverrides['User'] = 'SemanticScuttle_Service_AuthUser';
+$authType = 'MDB2';
+$authOptions = array(
+    'dsn' => array(
+        'phptype'  => 'mysql',
+        'hostspec' => 'FIXME',
+        'username' => 'FIXME',
+        'password' => 'FIXME',
+        'database' => 'FIXME',
+        'new_link' => true,
+    ),
+    'table'       => 'mantis_user_table',
+    'usernamecol' => 'username',
+    'passwordcol' => 'password',
+    'cryptType'   => 'md5',
+);
+-8<------------------
+
+
+MediaWiki
+---------
+Unfortunately, the password column does not contain a simple hashed
+password - for good reasons as described on
+http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual_talk:User_table#user_password_column
+
+If you configure your mediawiki to use passwords without salt, you
+can make it work nevertheless:
+
+MediaWiki LocalSettings.php:
+ $wgPasswordSalt = false;
+- after that, users need to change/update their passwords to get them
+unsalted in the database. You can verify if the passwords are unhashed
+if you do
+ SELECT CAST( user_password AS CHAR ) FROM user
+on your MediaWiki database. Passwords prefixed with ":A:" can be used.
+
+Another problem is that mediawiki user names begin with an uppercase letter.
+You need to modify www/login.php and remove the "utf8_strtolower" function
+call:
+ $posteduser = trim(utf8_strtolower(POST_USERNAME));
+becomes
+ $posteduser = trim(POST_USERNAME);
+
+
+config.php settings:
+-8<------------------
+$serviceoverrides['User'] = 'SemanticScuttle_Service_AuthUser';
+$authType = 'MDB2';
+$authOptions = array(
+    'dsn' => array(
+        'phptype'  => 'mysql',
+        'hostspec' => 'FIXME',
+        'username' => 'FIXME',
+        'password' => 'FIXME',
+        'database' => 'FIXME',
+        'new_link' => true,
+    ),
+    'table'       => 'user',
+    'usernamecol' => 'user_name',
+    'passwordcol' => 'user_password',
+    'cryptType'   => 'md5_mediawiki',
+);
+function md5_mediawiki($password) {
+    return ':A:' . md5($password);
+}
+-8<------------------