help with web security

[Shao Zhang <shao@cia.com.au>]

Hi,
	I am setting up an automated registration system where the cgi
	scripts need to do the following:

	1. add a new user to the system and write to passwd files
	2. update dns, restart named
	3. update httpd.conf, restart httpd
	4. update qmail conf, restart qmail-{..}
	5. many more...

	Now, to do all of this, surely I need root access. However,
	there is no way I can configure apache to run as root, and
	suEXEC won't help me much because it affectively runs that
	virtual webserver as root.

	So how do I achieve this while still enforce good security?

	One idea that I have is, let apache(cgi scripts) to write to a
	file with all the necessary information, and then have crontab
	to run the program as root to read this info and do all the update...

	Thanks for any help in advance.

Shao.

-- 
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Shao Zhang - Running Debian 2.1  ___ _               _____
Department of Communications    / __| |_  __ _ ___  |_  / |_  __ _ _ _  __ _ 
University of New South Wales   \__ \ ' \/ _` / _ \  / /| ' \/ _` | ' \/ _` |
Sydney, Australia               |___/_||_\__,_\___/ /___|_||_\__,_|_||_\__, |
Email: shao@cia.com.au                                                  |___/ 
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