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From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
Message-Id: <200103161957.MAA16801@usr02.primenet.com>
Subject: Re: idle wonderings about 'struct pcred'
To: crossd@cs.rpi.edu (David E. Cross)
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 19:57:38 +0000 (GMT)
Cc: freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG
In-Reply-To: <200103161910.OAA81258@cs.rpi.edu> from "David E. Cross" at Mar 16, 2001 02:10:55 PM
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> What I had in mind would be something like the following:
> 
> struct pcred {
> 	enum p_type;
> 	void *p_data;
> 	struct pcred *next;
> };
> 
> (That is a _very_ rough idea).
> 
> Our current, traditional, 'struct pcred' would become 'pcred_unix', with
> a p_type of 0 (#define-d to PCRED_TYPE_UNIX) and would be stuffed into the
> p_data pointer).
> 
> What do people think?

Good idea.  I have been pushing for something like this for years.

It would let you "preauthenticate" (ala a "password cache" on
login, or an explicit "add credential for XXX" program) for things
like per user authentication for an SMB or Appletalk client, on
a per user basis (most SMBFS implementations are useless, because
they do not offer per user security, unless you are using a single
user client OS like Windows).

The next neat step would be a "session manager", which would sit
on an fd listening for "new credential needed" requests from the
kernel, and interrogating the user.

For example, you could have a KDE program that sat there and waited,
and when the user tried to access a password protected file, a network
share, /dev/io, the CDROM, tape backup unit, mount an FS as someone
other than root, or whatever, it could pop up a dialog and say:

	,---------------------------------.
	| sessiond                        |
	|---------------------------------|
	|                                 |
	| Restricted access file: foo.txt |
	|                                 |
	| Password: [                   ] |
	|                                 |
	|  <  OK  >  <CANCEL>   < HELP >  |
	|                                 |
	`---------------------------------'


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.

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