[Samba] Special authentication question

[Wolfgang Ullrich]

I'm up to create a Samba server which provides PDF-printers in a network.
This server should rely on a special remastered Knoppix system.
Once deployed in a network, the server should be accessible for
configuration by a browser interface which allowes to create and configure
those printer shares. The main advantage of this server should be the
ability to email the "printed" documents to the user, who printed it.
Very important for easy installation and management is to avoid _any_
user management, exept of having an alias list to alias user names to
email addresses if required. It is assumed to allow _any_ user to print
his documents. This means there is no need for any authentication.

Now my problem:
When I export my printers with "security = share" and "guest = ok" I get
always the username "guest" out of the Samba variables. So I don't know
who has printed.
When I export my printers with any other security setting, I have to setup
each user with password or join the server to some remote authentication
system like NIS, LDAP, ADS or a NT-Domain. This should be avoided for
ease of administration.

In my opinion I need some authentication backend, which requests the
username, when a user connects to a printer, and then always allowes
access whithout looking for any password.

If anyone has a hint for any way to solve this problem, please post.
Also I'm able to create my own authentication module (in C) but didn't
find any useful specification about the "authentication API" yet. If there
are any useful links about this, please post.

If you want to see my work so far, look at http://www.yafpc.net

Thanks for all replies

w. ullrich
w.ullrich at n-view.net