Checking username and pw combo on pop3

macgilli

Relatively new to the subject, and have a couple of questions. If I just want to check that a username and password combination are valid on an internal server - how do I do it?

Limitations: Running Apache with PHP3 (for now), as a cgi (not as an Apache Module) on a Windows NT box. Mail server is on a different machine.

Let's say the mail server is called "mail" (pop3 server)

Can I do this without using IMAP functions? Can I somehow use the fsockopen function to open a connection then check for username and pw (as you can see this whole area is new to me).

Should I just go away and read more on authentication (I would but it seems php needs to be running as a module for the header function to work)? When we do run php as a module and not a cgi, the server ends up choking.

I'm trying to allow users to have one password (their mail password) rather than me keeping another list of passwords in a db.

Any advice?
Aaron M.

jlambert

As far as I know, HTTP_AUTH_USER is the only way to authenticate in the headers, and I believe its only availible in PHP4.

You could still try some ways of getting the password list into a database and pulling them from that.

Hope I was somewhat of a help.

ame12

Any reason you're not running PHP under IIS? Works pretty well, at least as a CGI. That way you can use normal NT security to control access to PHP pages without having to do extra work. The access control stuff (for file sharing) will work on this for users defined in the NT SAM.

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