User accounts in Gnats

User accounts in Gnats

[Hariharan.S.]

Hi,

Is it possible to access user accounts of server in Gnats ? Let's say i have
installed Gnats in a linux system, will it be possible for gnats to use all
the user accounts created in the system, as per the linux password ? I have
lot of users to be created in gnats, having this kind of hook will really
help. Also, users will be able to set their own passwords through standard
linux i/f and it will be encrypted, etc.

Thanks
hari



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Re: User accounts in Gnats

[Chad C. Walstrom]

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On Sat, Feb 16, 2002 at 04:24:52PM +0530, Hariharan.S. wrote:
> Is it possible to access user accounts of server in Gnats ? Let's say
> i have installed Gnats in a linux system, will it be possible for
> gnats to use all the user accounts created in the system, as per the
> linux password ? I have lot of users to be created in gnats, having
> this kind of hook will really help. Also, users will be able to set
> their own passwords through standard linux i/f and it will be
> encrypted, etc.

No.  Someone will have to get their hands dirty with some PAM coding.
PAM would give us the flexibility to authenticate against any number of
methods (system, LDAP, RDBMS, etc.).  We just need to tie in the GNATS
authentication method into the PAM API.  I've been busy lately, so I
haven't had a chance to look at it.  I want it, definitely, but I
currently have little time to contribute.

-- 
Chad Walstrom <chewie@wookimus.net>                 | a.k.a. ^chewie
http://www.wookimus.net/                            | s.k.a. gunnarr
Get my public key, ICQ#, etc. $(mailx -s 'get info' chewie@wookimus.net)

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Re: User accounts in Gnats

[Hans-Albert Schneider]

>>>>> "hari" == Hariharan S <hari@qpackets.com> writes:

    hari> Hi, Is it possible to access user accounts of server in
    hari> Gnats ? Let's say i have installed Gnats in a linux
    hari> system, will it be possible for gnats to use all the
    hari> user accounts created in the system, as per the linux
    hari> password ? I have lot of users to be created in gnats,
    hari> having this kind of hook will really help. Also, users
    hari> will be able to set their own passwords through
    hari> standard linux i/f and it will be encrypted, etc.

I am confused about your GNATS version.  Your previous mail
mentions GNATS 3.2, but the gnatsd is only available since about
3.90.

I assume you are talking about gnatsd.access, not about the
responsibles file (which has no passwords).

With GNATS 4, you could write some small sed or awk script that
copies the first two fields of your passwd and adds the access
level.  You could relatively easy extend it to exclude accounts
below a certain numeric user-id, or the first N accounts.

With 3.1xx, the passwords are stored in plain text, so you can't
use the passwords from /etc/passwd.  But you could still create
the file with a bit of awk or sed, and add some fixed password.
For one of my GNATS databases, I use one fixed password.  Not the
ideal solution, but as all users (about 20 persons) are working
on the same project, it is not a big issue (but I am looking for
GNATS 4).


If we are only talking about access via gnatsweb (no TkGnats, no
Emacs gnats.el, no I-dont't-know-what): Newer gnatsweb versions
can be set up to use authentication by your web server (see the
files CUSTOMIZE*).  Apache, for example, has an authentication
module that allow users to be checked against /etc/passwd
("AuthUserFile /etc/passwd"; see the documentation of mod_auth.
I think there is also a PAM module for Apache).


	Hans-Albert
-- 
Hans-Albert Schneider
Munich, Germany
EMail: Hans-Albert@HA-Schneider.de

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