Re: [Firebird-devel] crypt plugins

[Geoff W. <ge...@te...>]

Hi All,

Please excuse any ignorance displayed in this email :-)

From=20what I understand it is possible to have Firebird
authentication achieved through the operating system on
Posix systems.  I've never tried it myself.

Has anyone (recently) looked at providing this capability in
a consistent manner.  That is;  while we are talking about
plug-ins...

Why not remove the current Posix authentication and make it a
plug-in.  That way IF you want Posix authentication you have
to plug it in, and default installations are not left with
potential holes because of a feature that is not obvious.

And then someone really bright could look at creating a
Windows domain plugin.  Something that authenticates a user
via the Windows domain.  For Windows networks this would be
really convenient, because then the user need not have
multiple usernames and passwords and Windows security policies
could be used to centrally manage network access - including
the Firebird server.

If consistent operating system based authentication is
feasible then surely it something we should strive to achieve.
Besides the advantage of centralising user/password management
it also means that various "plug-in" security options become
automatically available on Linux because it already has this
capability.

I expect that this stuff has been investigated before, I was
wondering if there are reasons why it may not be feasible.

--=20
Geoff Worboys
Telesis Computing