AFP_Authenticate

What does this program do?

Provides a user friendly method (compared to the alternatives, anyway) for validating passwords when using strict password policies. In particular, email clients such as Entourage will do such things as:
  • using an incorrect password multiple times
  • not notifying users when they need to change their password
  • confusing error messages when the account is locked
What can I use it for?

By preflighting the passwords using AFP login we can check for various password situations, and return predictable results. There are some unavoidable anomalies, as on Panther (Mac OS 10.3) clients the OS will throw up alerts when accessing accounts that are locked and when incorrect passwords are used.

Although this script does display its progress, the intention is that another script will be used to provide the needed alerts and dialogs before and after calling this script. An AppleScript Studio app can do the job nicely.

 What are the system requirements for this program?

This script has only been tested on Mac OS 10.3.9 and 10.4.x. It is possible that it may also work on 10.2 systems.



Current Version: April 4, 2006

 Download afp_authenticate.py.zip