Posted by Malcolm Dew-Jones on 05/16/05 22:35

joltman (joltman@geocities.com) wrote:
: Well, they would be logging in from a Windows machine, if that would
: work the same way as samba. It wouldn't be a problem only working in
: the network, as that's the only place it will be used anyway.

I would try to find a unix utility that handles this for you.

I would suggest "su" but I don't know off hand how to pass in the password
without a tty (though I suspect it is possible, perhaps something like
"expect" could do it).

_IF_ you could use su, then you would simply use it with no further ado.
You would call it with the username and password to run a script that does
the work for the user. Either it works if the login is correct, or fails
if it isn't. In either case you would not need access to the password
file, or need to write much code as "su" already does all the work. If
you research then I suspect that there are other utilities that could be
used in a similar manner, the fact that none spring to my mind just means
I have a lousy memory.

If you do this then you would need to protect the passords more carefully
though, because they would be more "valuable" since they access more stuff
than just a web page. That means using HTTPS so noone could snoop the
network and find peoples passwords.



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