/etc/shadow

[Guy Harris]

>2:  Write a server (passwdd) to accept connections from clients
>    who request the password entry for a given user
>3:  Re-write getpw{ent,uid,nam} to connect to the client
>4:  Re-compile everything that uses getpw{ent,uid,nam}

Sounds like you've just invented Yellow Pages....

SunOS 4.0 has, in its "C2 secure" mode, a shadow password file, as well
as an RPC-based "password validation" server.  The latter is the way you
let non-privileged programs match passwords; I suspect you send the
encrypted password over the wire and ask it "does this match the
encrypted password for user 'x'?"  This is a similar approach to the
"privileged password validation" utility Doug suggested.