Why not authenticate via LDAP or some other directory server, then let the
user manage their LDAP account via a web interface?

You can also manage web user accounts with a simple database -- that is what
most CMS systems do (Wordpress, Drupal, etc.).   But LDAP is more robust.

Using system accounts to manage web users sounds like making things more
difficult than they need to be.  If you want to provide a web front-end to
your server, why not use a web-friendly account management tool like LDAP?

Curts

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 10:57 PM, Andrew Berg <bahamutzero8825 at gmail.com>wrote:

> I need a simple web interface to let users change their passwords. I
> don't want them to have shell access since they wouldn't know how to use
> it (and it limits what an attacker can do if the account is
> compromised). Usermin doesn't always work right, and it seems to screw
> up passwords, making it impossible for users to log in via FTP (and
> probably other services like HTTP). I want it to be a simple interface
> to passwd (Usermin uses MD5 hashes for some reason and passwd uses
> SHA-512). I have Apache already set up (and users are authenticated
> using their system account credentials; no anonymous users are allowed),
> so it doesn't need its own webserver capabilities.
>
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