to add system account with php?

[tszwing]

I want to add a script that will check for some field of a student in my school e.g. (full name, ID card NO), after validation, we permit him to add a email account( which is a system account), How can I do it? Thank you very much!

[Anon]

u cant do that for reasons of security but u can add users to a virtual email domain using vmailmgr.
im using it; it works with qmail only
u can get it at www.vmailmgr.org
be
shiv

[[deleted]]

First, you can't do this without being root.

Second, you could give root-privileges to the webserver user, but you'd be a fool to do so.

Third, if you use man useradd you will see there is an option to enter the password on the commandline.

If you feel lucky you can create a script that will write the new usernames and passwords to a file.
Carefull, that file will be readable to the webserver, and thus to everybody who can write PHP/CGI scripts on your server.
Then the root's crontab can start a script every 5 minutes that reads that file and creates all the accounts.

Note: be very very carefull, you are opening up your system to a whole new range of dangers.

[[deleted]]

The point is that you don't want the webserver to do anything as root, only as itself.

It may however give root instructions to do something. But, you will have to do some checking to see that what the webserver is asking root to do is actually allowed.

You can theoretically interact with a shell session, but most programs can take all data from the commandline.