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From: TOMIII@MTUS5.BITNET (Thomas Dwyer III)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
Subject: Re: password program needed
Message-ID: <90346.112220TOMIII@MTUS5.BITNET>
Date: 12 Dec 90 16:22:20 GMT
Organization: Computing Technology Services, Michigan Technological Univ.
Lines: 36

In article <3589@jaytee.East.Sun.COM>, geoff@hinode.East.Sun.COM (Geoff Arnold @
Sun BOS - R.H. coast near the top) says:
>[I tried to reply to Fred, but email bounced.] What behaviour
>DO you want to see if the authentication fails? Or are you saying
>you want a Toolkit routine to authenticate a username/password
>and another one to set the uid/gid?
>
>#Good luck.  I've been trying to do this for months.  It is possible to
>#change your uid/gid with a simple program, but I know of no simple way
>#to authenticate a password.  In this respect, I find the toolkit very
>#lacking.

I must admit that I was not too clear on my last posting.  My complaint
on the toolkit is for its lack of ability to perform the various "NET"
functions such as logging in, mounting drives, etc.  Granted, the toolkit
is a major strength for PC-NFS.  I would like however, not to be tied
down to spawning NET.EXE for any network functions.  This is a slow
process and requires more memory than some DOS shells (ie - shell to DOS
from an application) will let you have.

>I guess I can't win. Half the folks are demanding that I tighten
>up security, the others want me to provide hooks to let you plug in
>an arbitrary uid/gid.  However, I'm surprised at what you say.
>If you indeed know how to plug your uid/gid into the PCNFS.SYS
>data structures, you've solved the hard part. The rest is no more
>than a "callrpc()" away.

Yes, I do know how to plug a new uid/gid into PCNFS.SYS's structures,
and yes that is the hard part, however I cannot expect Sun to leave
these structures in the same spot in future releases, patches, etc.


Thomas Dwyer III                        Email: tomiii@mtu.edu
Network Programmer                             tomiii@mtus5.BITNET
Computing Technology Services           Voice: (906) 487-2110
Michigan Technological University       Fax:   (906) 487-2787