passwd replacement - password changing utility
 

I am looking for an application that can work to change a user's password from an X window. The problem I am facing is that this program can not rely on qt or kde libraries, is also can not be a cgi program (I can't run a web server in this environment).


xterm and it's variants certainly are x programs. My "customer" would like a program that looks and feels like kdepasswd, but without the reliance on kde. They also don't want this program to be run in any type of "console" environment (xterm or variants). In other words calling a dialog box from a script won't work.

Rather then redevelop the wheel, I would rather find my "customer" a package that has already been written to handle their needs. I would have to think that a program of this nature has been written in the past, so I would rather find a package that can already fulfill their needs without the need for my development time.

Is anyone aware of such a program?

You need to call an engineer; their job is to invent odd things (like if you ask them to create for you "a phone that rings without sound", they bring you a vibrating alert system). Why on earth would anybody want to get such a thing? First of all, most of the apps that have GUI, work really in the console. So such thing is stupid, if you can run it from the console in the first place. This is also very easy in X, running a graphical terminal app (but you didn't want to).

Why would they want to use graphical passwd replacement? Replacing a password is a matter of giving the old one and new one twice (these days, at least), and because it still is text format, then why use graphics for it? Passwd is simply, ultimately the best tool you could use. I't simple. It's small (eats up only few text lines, not a new window). It's fast. It's everything you're dreamt of..

If they want such an app, why don't they go Windows? :) and if it has to be graphical and in Linux and in KDE (or Gnome), then why the heck can't it use Qt (or GTK)? Really?

I'd say your customers are odd people :)

as they say, good inventions shouldn't be made better..it often leads to something worse.

Don't you love the "simplicity" that customers give us on a daily basis?

I am basically translating a system that is 20 years old, this is how they changed passwords in the past, but they have no source code for the motif program they used to wrap passwd.

The KDE and Gnome libraries will not be on the system, thus the stringent requirements. We will be using a more lightweight window manager than those. So basically I am looking for something in motif.

If it isn't broke, don't fix it. (Unless of course your "customer" requests it).

alrighty..well it doesn't sound too complicated; maybe you just try recoding it? that just might be a smaller problem than trying to blindly locate such an app from the net..it doesn't sound too familiar to mee, and I think such a program is not in demand these days, with all these KDEs and Gnomes around..so re-programming it might be easier. Especially if you have an idea of how it exactly works.