Re: [seul-edu] Users Changing their Passwords over web?

[Daniel Dent <ddent@vc.bc.ca>]

On Thu, 11 Nov 1999, Bill Tihen -- TECHNOLOGY wrote:

> Out of curriosity -- why aren't you using poppassd?  I
> recently learned out it -- I feel kind of stupid for not
> even knowing of it's existence since it apparently works
> with Eudora too -- but anyway -- it seems like it is
> designed just for remote passwd changes.  

I wasn't aware of popassd, but that wasn't the problem that I was
attempting to solve with my password changer.  All of our staff have been
told about pine, and that's how they would change their password.  The
problem that I was solving was that when I started giving accounts to
people in the school (this is the first year of giving everyone an account
- a script I wrote to create the accounts from a MacSchool export), I told
them they could use their e-mail from webvc.  I haven't been telling them
about pop or pine to keep it simple.  Then someone said they had lost
their password slip, and what was it, it clicked for me that they had no
way to change their password.

> 
> o Has anyone written a web cgi script for poppassd? 
> Anyone with any experience with it?

I have never seen or used one but it probably wouldn't be to hard to
write with expect.  A simple modification of the yppasswd script would
probably do it.

> o I also recently read someone's idea to set the user's
> shell account to /usr/bin/passwd --  how good or bad is
> that idea?

I haven't experimented with that as we give everyone shell accounts
anyway.  But I don't see any problems with it.  It would effectively limit
them to password changing.

> o Where did you get the java ssh client applet?  That
> would help me with the macs!  That is great.  Is it GPL?

I got it from a company name Mindterm.  It is 95% GPL (the 5% being the
RSA code - patent issues).  They also have SSH enabled vnc, among other
things.

You can get it from:
www.mindbright.se/mindterm

> o Do you have an easy way for users to do email
> forwarding? 

Not at this point, but it sounds like something that could be easily
added.

> o The web form for ftp sounds like it would be very
> helpful to use too.  (Can it (un)/tar or (un)/zip
> files?  That would allow users to backup their files!)

The (un)taring or (un)zipping of files could be another feature to add
when I finish the ftp web form.  I don't think it would be too difficult. 
I currently have the ftp upload done, but not the download.

Daniel Dent