Re: [Auth]mds and Barry: MACS authorization

[Mario D. Santana]

John wrote:
> In reviewing the MACS source code (0.5 CVS; is there a later version 
> available???), and specifically the single login mechanism; I was 
> confronted by two thoughts -

The latest "stable" release is 0.5a, on June 5. There has not been a
release since, because the next release will be almost completely 
refactored.

> 1) Why are the system names, user names, and passwords for other systems 
> stored in the authentication module? Would they not be better stored in 
> the Profile module? [...]

This was a matter of historical convenience in the 0.5a release. The 
latest CVS (which is pretty much unusable atm) does exactly as you 
suggest.

> 2) Should the authentication service use PAM on either the front-end 
> (for the MACS login) or on the back-end? To avail ourselves of the many 
> PAM modules already written?

Yes and yes. There is a pam front-end in 0.5a (which I was using for my 
machine's login service!) We have been thinking of ways to do the pam 
backend but relegated it to the back burner for now. If anyone's 
interested, I can explain the ideas we've had for this -- they're fairly 
interesting.

Cheers!

mds

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