Re: system level adduser - repost

Absolutly. Scary scary stuff. There are ways you could do it, but you don't want to. You really really don't want to. Have a look at qmail and some of the virtual user packages for it. That's the kind of thing you want to do. qmail can keep it's mail users and system users apart. PHP even has some support for controlling this directly. I'm too lazy to find URLs for you now, but look on freshemeat.net James Nicolae Mihalache wrote: > > On Fri, 16 Jun 2000, John Hogan wrote: > > > I posted this last night, too late for all you gurus to respond. Here's > > what I had to say: > > > > We're creating a webmail application using U-Wash IMAP. The user fills out > > a signup form to get an account. We want to add the user in real time, > > giving them access to their account immediately. > > > > The best idea right now is to loop through the /etc/passwd file, looking > > for the existence of a system username. If the selected name is not on the > > list, we'd like to add it (probably using 'system()'). > > > > Would anyone care to comment on the security and procedure of adding system > > users from a php script? > > > I don't think that a too good idea to change passwd from a php program. > First of all apache has no right to change passwd because it runs as > nobody user. Of course you can do a setuid program for adding users. > If you need users only for mail, I suggest using cyrus imap > server. With cyrus you don't need to make real users and you can create > users from php using admin user/password (wich has nothing to do with root > account). > > Mache > > -- > PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, e-mail: php-general-unsubscribe@lists.php.net > For additional commands, e-mail: php-general-help@lists.php.net > To contact the list administrators, e-mail: php-list-admin@lists.php.net