Date: 10/12/06 (Apache)    Keywords: apache

Suppose I am running an Apache server with SSL, and I want to delegate authentication and authorization to the host OS in the following fashion:

(1) First, try to access the requested file as the default user (e.g., www-data).

(2) If that doesn't work, use PAM to authenticate, and then setuid to the appropriate user, setgid to the appropriate group, and try to access the requested file that way.

From the documentation it appears that the parts exist (suExec and mod_auth_pam), but it looks impossible to do the whole (short of writing my own module, of course), and my attempts at Googling didn't turn up anything useful.

Does anyone know whether this can be done with existing tools, and if so how? (Or if not, whether anyone is already working on such a project and would like some help?)

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/apache/34585.html