Using MySQL as user database

[Alexander List <alexlist@sbox.tu-graz.ac.at>]

Hi!

I am thinking about using mysql for administering my user database, as it
will probably be quite large (expected round 10000 users).

I thought about the following ways to do this:

1) using normal passwd/shadow files, dumped regularly from mysql
   
   I encountered the following difficulties with this approach:
   
   a) I do not want to store clear passwords anywhere, so
   b) I would have to encrypt the user passwords "manually" when adding
      a user to the database

2) patching shadow so that it can use mysql for authentication
   
   I think there are even more problems with this approach, because
   not only shadow uses the passwd/shadow database, but the whole libc
   does, and I'm not sure if all my programs that need user information
   use the getpwent() function of the C library...

So my question is:

   Has anyone done something like this before?
   
   What do you think is the best approach? 

   I thought about writing a script that

   *) creates the user in the system with a random password that is of
      course sent to the printer immediately (well, at least the user 
      should know his/her password) with all the other account info,
   *) creates the user in the MySQL database with no password information,
      but details such as account status (active, hold, delete),
   
   and a cron job that

   *) updates the password database regularly, that is, removes users 
      from the database or puts a * into the passwd file according to the
      user status in the SQL database

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions on this topic!

Thanks in advance for your help...

Alex
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Alexander List @ HTU Graz, Rechbauerstr. 12, A-8010 Graz
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