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I'm in the process of writing a server application that mainly allows people to submit jobs to a DRM system (e.g. TORQUE) over RMI. The application needs to run as root so that it can submit proxy jobs (where a job is run as a user other than the user who submits it), however this obviously isn't secure - the user name is simply a string parameter in the RMI. Anyone could pass any user name in and have a job run as that user.

What's the best way to get Java to authenticate this user name against authorised users of the system (with the aid of a password that would also be passed in)? I've had a look at JAAS and Apache Shiro, but they seem to be all about creating your own authentication methods. I want to use the system's existing authentication methods (Unix-like system), whatever they happen to be. Essentially if the user can SSH in, they're all right.

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If your backend uses LDAP (which is possible if you have to manage a relatively large number of users for which a local /etc/passwd might be tedious), you can use JAAS and the existing LdapLoginModule.

If you want to authenticate against you local system (assuming Linux server) without this, it looks like JAAS-PAM might be able to help, although I've never tried it.

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I did a bit of reading based on your suggestion of PAM and came across JPAM ( jpam.sourceforge.net ), which I think I'll be using.

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