Adapted behaviour of ui.username() to documentation and mention it explicitly: Searched in this order: $HGUSER, [ui] section of hgrcs, $EMAIL and stop searching if one of these is set. Abort if found username is an empty string to force specifying the commit user elsewhere, e.g. with line option or repo hgrc. If not found, use $LOGNAME or $USERNAME +"@full.hostname".

#!/usr/bin/env python
#
# An example CGI script to use hgweb, edit as necessary

import cgitb, os, sys
cgitb.enable()

# sys.path.insert(0, "/path/to/python/lib") # if not a system-wide install
from mercurial import hgweb

h = hgweb.hgweb("/path/to/repo", "repository name")
h.run()