my own passwords file

[douglass davis]

I would like to make a UNIX program which uses a password file of my own
creation (not realated to the /etc passwords file). The catch is that
it must be accessable/modifiable from many different hosts. All of the
hosts are within the same company. But, the hosts may be at many
different company sites.

I am trying to think of a scheme to handle this. Could any one think of
some hints to give me? The main problem is how to modify the file from
many different places. Also, are there any hints on any system calls
etc. that may be helpful to me?

btw: my real email address doesn't have any Zs in it.

-d

[noname]

douglass davis wrote:

I think what you need is an authentication protocol. Kerberos?

[Mark Rafn]

douglass davis <douglas...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>I would like to make a UNIX program which uses a password file of my own
>creation (not realated to the /etc passwords file). The catch is that
>it must be accessable/modifiable from many different hosts. All of the
>hosts are within the same company. But, the hosts may be at many
>different company sites.

You need to be more specific about your needs. Can you just NFS-mount
the appropriate directory everywhere it's needed? Can you just have
anyone who needs to modify the file ssh into a master location? Do you
need to allow some people to view/modify some records and not others?

>I am trying to think of a scheme to handle this. Could any one think of
>some hints to give me? The main problem is how to modify the file from
>many different places.

A quick hack would be to set up a web server with a URL to retrieve info
and one to modify it. Authentication and transfer encryption are basically
free, you just need to write a cgi/plugin/php/whatever that does the
storage, updating and retrieval in a way that meets your needs.
--
Mark Rafn da...@dagon.net <http://www.dagon.net/>

[Nils O. Selåsdal]

People uses LDAP for this(and possibly Kerberos)

[thi]

douglass davis <douglas...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<3D17AA59...@earthlink.net>...

Hi,
NIS (standard packages are available for Solaris, Linux, AIX) is exactly
designed for such purposes. A NIS server can hold a number of 'database'
for user/passwd, hosts, etc., one can even add custom made resources like
phone list... Clients may fetch these information via an RPC interface.
Especially for central user/passwd resources there is a 'yppasswd' tool for
updating NIS password instead of the local onces
For an overview, see the O'Reilly classic "NFS and NIS" by Hal Stern.

Tankred