Method Not Implemented
If you run into the following error when editing wiki pages
on PenLUG:
Method Not Implemented
POST to /twiki/bin/save/Main/YourWikiPageName not supported.
it's because of http "post" security validation. It seems that
the additional security check is being done by
mod_security on the penlug server,
and this is making the editing of existing twiki pages quite awkward.
For example, if you include any of the following strings in your wiki page,
Firefox will give the above error (the strings are shown here with additional spaces,
otherwise I can't upload this page due to the security check, obviously):
- / etc / (to give the name of some file in the Linux filesystem)
- c d /anywhere (change directory to anywhere in the root filesystem)
- w g e t (to download some archive from the web)
- `any_linux_command` (backslash surrounding any Linux command)
As a workaround, you can (perhaps surprisingly)
replace the string "w g e t" by "curl -O", and replace `any_linux_command` by $(any_linux_command).
I haven't come up with an obvious workaround for writing "/ etc / anything"
in a wiki page as of now, except for adding spaces, which is quite an ugly workaround.
I'm hoping the reader isn't using "cut-n-paste".
I guess I'll have to google for where the effects of this new
security validation is explained from the point of view of twiki users,
as I've been running into it quite a lot recently,
and the effect is basically that it makes your page "uneditable"
if it happens to contain any of these "security" issues.
On one hand, the additional security is a good thing, as it could help
mitigate cross-site-scripting attacks, but on the other hand, of course,
it's quite awkward to write about Linux without at least
mentioning / etc / something_or_other at some point, so it's quite likely
existing pages will appear to become "uneditable" due to this (apparently
fairly new) security validation that's being done.
--
PeterKnaggs - 08 Jul 2007
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