User management API

Question

Hi,

I am developing an application suite where users will need to connect to a server and depending on their account type they will be given some services. The server will run Linux. Can you please suggest me some user management API which I can use to develop the server program? By user management I mean user authentication and other related functionalities. I prefer to work in C++ or python, but any other language should not be a problem. Please note that this application suite is not web based.

Due to security issues, I do not want to give each user a separate account on the linux server.

Thanks, Akshey

Answer 1

http://web.mit.edu/Kerberos/ Not a drop in solution, but not quite sure what you're looking for.

Answer 2

Django is a python framework that provides all these services. It's very modular too, so you only have to use the components that what you want/need.

Its default admin tools provide authentication and authorization. Includes Users, Permissions, Groups, and message queueing.

If you don't want something as high level as a web front end. Twisted provides an authentication/credentials module. (http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/current/core/howto/cred.html)

Answer 3

You should check out PAM.

For security, you should only do this over SSL so that the user's password is not sent over the wire in cleartext.