i have my servers with RHEL 4 and Oracle database. I have the applications running on the app server. I need to restrict access to the Oracle forms in the application server based on the client IP, eg. give permission to around 10 machines to access a particular form through a URL and restrict others from accessing the same.

how do i do this? do i need to go in for squid? or can it be done by configuring the httpd.conf file?

The easiest most straight forward way would be to grab the http variable for REMOTE_IP, then do a switch in your code.

in pseudo code:

$ipaddress = REMOTE_IP
if($ipaddress==$ip1 || $ipaddress==$ip2 [etc])
{
//show form
}
else
{
print "access denied"
}

Relying on IP could bite you if your users are on DHCP with their ISP.
You could also put the allowed ips in an array and do an array search to determine if they are allowed.

If this form is the whole reason for the system to be there, then you could restrict using a firewall, but that would block the entire server, not just the page you are securing.

Personally I'd secure it with LDAP. That way it's restricted by user, not machine. It will save you a lot of trouble later. LDAP would be the best option if you are in a network with a directory server. That way you can let them use their network login credentials and just check to see if they belong to the "Special Form" group. Single signon 4tw.

I secure all of my company's internal apps this way. In fact I use LDAP to manage different access groups for my apps. You can assign very granular permissions in your apps this way by using a bitmask and bitwise comparison. If you run out of bits, just make a second word and you get 32 more permissions, or 64 if everything is 64 bit.

Using LDAP puts the burden of user management on your network administrators instead of you ; )

-Viz

thank you for the reply.
but do assist me further.

where do i do the changes? where is the pseudo code? Do i need to do the changes in the httpd.conf file or any other config file.

Sree