[pmwiki-users] questions about user authentication

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Wed, Apr 13, 2005 at 05:06:43PM +0200, Joachim Durchholz wrote:
> >Do you want to use PAM in the sense of authorizing against the
> >user accounts already on the system (which PAM supports) or 
> >some arbitrary database of passwords (which PAM doesn't support)?
> 
> I'm not sure that the former is worth the effort. It's sure a great time 
> saver for those who have root access to the machine with their PmWiki 
> installation (I do), but I'm not sure that the user base warrants the 
> effort.
> What mechanisms do you want to use? Does it need a PHP extension library 
> - and, if yes, which one?

How about something like http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~ccunning/pam_auth/ ?

> Hmm... an alternative would be to include some installation-specific 
> data in the service name. Something along the lines of
> 
>   "PmWiki$ScriptUrl"
> 
> On the plus side, that would make sure that every installation has a 
> definitely-useful PAM service name. On the minus side, a service name 
> like PmWiki/var/www/some.domain.tld/pmwiki/pmwiki.php it very ugly, and 
> prevents moving around PmWiki directories.
> 
> Don't know what's best here...

Best would seem to be a good default service name and let the admin
set it to something else as desired for each PmWiki installation.
Some things are just done better/easier/safer as manual configurations 
instead of automatic.

Pm