I'm trying to write a daemon that will fulfill the same role as a *nix FTP daemon, but using the DAV protocol. CPAN gives me the complicated bits in the form of HTTP::Daemon and Net::DAV::Server. The daemon should accept incoming DAV requests, fork, authenticate the user against the system password database, setuid to the user if they pass, and serve up DAV responses from their home directory. Then exit. My searching has not helped, so I seek help here:

• What is the best way to validate a system user? Using getpwnam() and crypt() seems so open to exploitation. Ideally, I'd like to be able to leave as much as possible of the authentication to the OS.
• It seems that in order for children to setuid to an arbitrary user, the master process needs to run as root. Is there a good way for a non-root process to "su", given that it has the username and password of the user?
• Is getting involved in PAM going to help me in any way? Could I pretend to be an FTP service given that my requirements are identical?

I throw myself to the mercy of the Monks.

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