I have been contemplating setting up a method to allow my email users to 
change their password.  I have set my system up so they all use the same 
account (popuser) but pop authentication is done with the 
/var/qmail/users/poppasswd file instead.  I wrote a perl script to behaive 
much the same way the standard passwd command does, and could easily write 
other scripts that can manipulate this file.  The problem is, how do I handle 
allowing users to change passwords securely?  I have thought of running a cgi 
script via web, but something about doing a setuid root cgi script scares me 
a little.  Since none of the users have shell access, they cant use ssh or 
telnet (not even enabled on the server) to connect to the system.  A few 
ideas I have been kicking around is using some sort of spooler, where 
password change requests are put into a file, then into a directory- which 
would be called by some program either via cron or a daemon and process the 
requests.  That way any cgi script would be able to submit a request.  
Another thought I had was via email- user sends email to something like 
chpasswd at slushpupie.com with their username, old password, and new password 
and all incoming mail to that account is handled via some program/script. 

Does anyone have any other ideas? Any comments on the ideas I have?


Jay

-- 
Jay Kline
list at slushpupie.com
http://www.slushpupie.com

When you overesteem great hackers,
more users become cretins.
When you develop encryption,
more users become crackers.

The Guru leads
by emptying user's minds
and increasing their quotas,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.
When users lack knowledge and desire,
management will not try to interfere.

Practice not-looping,
and everything will fall into place.