Skip to main content Link Menu Expand (external link) Document Search Copy Copied
Buggy Racing

Configuring authorisation

Admin → Config → Config:Auth

You need to know the current authorisation code in order to change it.

About the authorisation code

The race server allows administrators to make operational changes, but some actions also require the authorisation code to be supplied. It’s effectively an extra level of “are-you-sure?” safety against hard-to-undo changes. Depending on how you’re running your site, and how many staff accounts you have, you might not need to share the authorisation code with all staff.

In general, you need the authorisation code to change configuration and user details (including registration).

Initial set-up and default value

The first step of the set-up phase forces you to set the authorisation code for your site. By default, its initial value is CHANGEME. If you’re nervous about this — which is sensible if you might not be able to hit the first stage of the set-up phase soon after you’ve launched the server — you should set the environment variable AUTHORISATION_CODE to something secret before you start the server for the first time.

Forgotten the code?

If you forget the authorisation code, you can use the mechanism for overriding any configuration settings: explicitly set AUTHORISATION_CODE as an environment variable and restart the server.

The authorisation code (like users’ passwords) is hashed (that is, except when it is declared as an environment variable, it is not stored in plaintext on the server). So if you do forget it you can’t simply look it up backstage. Likewise, if you set it via an environment variable declaration, remember to remove this declaration once you’ve restarted the server.