[Zope] Unifying user authentication.

[Alec Munro]

Hi all,
I'm getting better, but there's still quite a bit I don't understand 
about Zope, Apache, and Linux.
Since I am running a system with the three of them, and the date that it 
will go into production is coming up, I thought I should try to figure 
out  how I am going to handle user authentication.
My primary experience with user's is that of using MySQL for that 
purpose, with users having a crypt-ed password. I have implemented this, 
but  it is only particularily good for the system I have built on top of 
Zope (in this case, primarily a forum), and I would like ideas on how to 
unify my current system with the User Authentication facilities 
available through Zope, Apache, and Linux. I am not heavily invested in 
my current system, though having a MySQL-based system is quite useful in 
terms of doing joins against other things that I do need the database for.
Probably one of the most difficult things is that I am not sure what I 
need the users to be able to do in each situation. But I'll try to give 
my best guess at these.
In Linux, I need to be able to create users that can SSH in and install 
programs within their area of the system, as well as modify the 
configuration of any system-wide programs they are relying on(such as 
Apache or MySQL). In terms of Apache, there may be entire dynamic sites 
built outside of Zope (due to the skillsets of other developers), so I 
will need to provide user authentication for these sites (which I guess 
could be done through MySQL fairly simply, assuming we wanted to carry 
users between sites). In Zope, I am undecided. I want to allow 
non-programmers access to upload and create files, and change 
configuration to some extent, and while I am leaning towards creating 
something myself for this functionality, I get the feeling that with a 
better understanding of  Zope, I could pull this off  fairly easily, but 
as I do not yet have that understand, I plead that someone at least give 
me a shove in the right direction.
Thanks for reading this whole thing, any comments at all are appreciated.

Alec Munro