[tpop3d-discuss] APOP from flat files

Chris Lightfoot chris at ex-parrot.com
Tue, 4 Feb 2003 20:45:49 +0000


On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 08:29:17PM +0000, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> Perhaps I'm being dense, but is this possible? Are people only using
> APOP with MySQL/perl/other?
> 
> **
> 
> I was thinking of patching out fgetpwent() from auth_flatfile.c so that
> it a) wouldn't require redundant trailing :::: [which confused the hell
> out of me the first time I used this] b) could allow the
> {scheme}password technique instead.
> 
> It's been a while since I paid much attention to the source so perhaps
> better ideas might be out there...

That's a fairly plausible idea. I think that the original
author was using a system where fgetpwent would work OK
without the trailing ::::. By all means patch it, though
if it could be back-compatible, that would be a plus....

> This line of enquiry is mostly motivated by a friend moving from
> qpopper, which uses gdbm for its auth db. It did occur to use auth-perl
> but not everyone wants to link against a perl binary... I must admit, I
> quite like the idea of using some form of DBM file, e.g. GDBM or CDB
> *without* having to pull in perl or exec something. I know there's a
> move toward not proliferating a million-and-one auth drivers but I
> imagine this might be quite small. Any thoughts?

Others have suggested DBM-based drivers, and I think I'd
accept one. One (obvious) comment is that you can't hold
the DBM file open since it has to be possible to change
passwords while tpop3d is running.

-- 
I can see clearly now the rain has gone/
But it looks like someone's going to drop the bomb
(Alice What's The Matter, Terrorvision)