Perforce 2007.2 System Administrator's Guide

Chapter 3: Administering Perforce: Superuser TasksHow password-based authentication worksPassword-based authentication is stateless; once a password is correctly set, access isgranted for indefinite time periods. Prior to Release 2004.2, the password-basedauthentication mechanism did not enforce password strength or existence requirements.The concept of the server security level, introduced in Release 2004.2, enablesadministrators to enforce password strength and existence requirements. See “Serversecurity levels” on page 41 for details.Password based authentication is supported at security levels 0, 1, and 2.How ticket-based authentication worksTicket-based authentication is based on time-limited tickets that enable users to connect toPerforce servers. Tickets are stored in the file specified by the P4TICKETS environmentvariable. If this variable is not set, tickets are stored in %USERPROFILE%\p4tickets.txt onWindows, and in $HOME/.p4tickets on UNIX and other operating systems. Tickets aremanaged automatically by 2004.2 and later Perforce client programs.Tickets have a finite lifespan, after which they cease to be valid. By default, tickets arevalid for 12 hours (43200 seconds). To set different ticket lifespans for groups of users, editthe Timeout: field in the p4 group form for each group. The timeout value for a user inmultiple groups is the largest timeout value for all groups of which a user is a member. Tocreate a ticket that does not expire, set the Timeout: field to 0.Although tickets are not passwords, Perforce servers accept valid tickets wherever userscan specify Perforce passwords. This behavior provides the security advantages of ticketbasedauthentication with the ease of scripting afforded by password authentication.Ticket-based authentication is supported at all server security levels, and is required atsecurity level 3.Logging in to PerforceTo use ticket-based authentication, get a ticket by logging in with the p4 login command:p4 loginYou are prompted for your password, and a ticket is created for you in your ticket file.You can extend your ticket’s lifespan by calling p4 login while already logged in. If yourun p4 login while logged in, your ticket’s lifespan is extended by 1/3 of its initialtimeout setting, subject to a maximum of your initial timeout setting.By default, Perforce tickets are valid for your IP address only. If you have a shared homedirectory that is used on more than one machine, you can log in to Perforce from bothmachines by using the command:p4 login -ato create a ticket in your home directory that is valid from all IP addresses.40 Perforce 2007.2 System Administrator’s Guide