User Management and Authentication with Perl

[Ilias Lazaridis]

Is there any user-management/authentication solution which could be
seen as the standard within the perl domain?

Is there any solution available which makes a general interface
available and allows "authenticators" to be plugged-in (e.g. an
"Standard Unix", an "Open Id" plugin)?

Are those solutions scalable (e.g. runs first on one machine, then can
be moved to a dedicated authentication machine)?

Is there any worked-out overview available?

..

 

[Tim Southerwood]

Is there any user-management/authentication solution which could be
seen as the standard within the perl domain?

Hi

For authorisation/authentication, PAM is pretty much the defacto standard on
linux at least.

See here for a list of perl modules:

http://search.cpan.org/search?query=pam&mode=all

PAM is a standard client API to a variety of account and authentication
mechanisms, including, but not limited to:

local files (passwd/group/shadow)
NIS/NIS+
LDAP
Kerberos

Is there any solution available which makes a general interface
available and allows "authenticators" to be plugged-in (e.g. an
"Standard Unix", an "Open Id" plugin)?

Are those solutions scalable (e.g. runs first on one machine, then can
be moved to a dedicated authentication machine)?

PAM is a client side solution. Are you asking if there is an auth/account
server framework for perl? I don't think so - and I think you are better
off using perl to manage in an automated way (if required) something
existing that's proven good like kerberos plus LDAP/NIS/local-files.

HTH
Tim

 

[Ilias Lazaridis]

Hi

For authorisation/authentication, PAM is pretty much the defacto standard on
linux at least.

See here for a list of perl modules:

http://search.cpan.org/search?query=pam&mode=all

PAM is a standard client API to a variety of account and authentication
mechanisms, including, but not limited to:

local files (passwd/group/shadow)
NIS/NIS+
LDAP
Kerberos

ok, sounds good.

PAM is a client side solution. Are you asking if there is an auth/account
server framework for perl? I don't think so - and I think you are better
off using perl to manage in an automated way (if required) something
existing that's proven good like kerberos plus LDAP/NIS/local-files.

I am looking for something which would give me the flexibility to:

* reuse the existent apache httppw files
* move over to the linux user management
* move over to an LDAP system
* move over to a decentral system (e.g. openID)

..

 

[Tim Southerwood]

Ilias Lazaridis coughed up some electrons that declared:

* reuse the existent apache httppw files
* move over to the linux user management
* move over to an LDAP system
* move over to a decentral system (e.g. openID)

OK - I think PAM is what you want at the client end as you can reconfigure
the client PAM config at each stage to use different auth/account services.

I guess that for each stage, you'll need to write your own perl to manage
the backend.

I would consider getting the core data into a database of some sort
(Postgresql works well for this IME) and drive that data into the backend
via perl.

Cheers

Tim

 

[Ilias Lazaridis]

Ilias Lazaridis coughed up some electrons that declared:




OK - I think PAM is what you want at the client end as you can reconfigure
the client PAM config at each stage to use different auth/account services.

I guess that for each stage, you'll need to write your own perl to manage
the backend.

ok, you mean those which are not available yet.

I would consider getting the core data into a database of some sort
(Postgresql works well for this IME) and drive that data into the backend
via perl.

I forgot to mention, that this should work fine with

* Standard RMI (Remote Method Invocation) of perl



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