After browsing around, I found a few URLs with user managers (mostly not free):

• http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/Password_Protection/
• http://www.scriptsmatrix.com/Perl/Password_Protecting/index.html

Following a link or two, I found a free, Perl-based user manager that might do your job (or might be modified to do so): http://www.locked-area.com/Products/DP/

A 'cheap' setup that wouldn't take much work to create might be a solution that just uses Apache's .htaccess / .htpasswd files and 'Basic' authentication. It's not terribly secure, but it may be appropriate for the job. It doesn't use databases, but doesn't take much time to set up either. It doesn't support some of the fancier features (inactivity timeouts, eavesdropping protection, user self-registration).

I'm guessing that's what the free product from 'locked-area' does, but haven't downloaded it or used it.

As wheels go, this one is pretty simple if you have to roll your own.

The basic flow of a homebrewed login app is something like:

1. Every page checks the incoming request for a valid authorization cookie, redirect to login screen if not found.
2. HTTPS Login screen asks for username, password, other data (perhaps a resource or group the user wants to join)
3. After the username & password are validated and match, record the IP address & username in a token database with a new unique token ID
4. Send the user their token ID as a cookie
5. Send them to the page they wanted to see, as long as you keep getting back that valid cookie (and the user's IP address matches the IP you've stored for that token)

Depending on what resources the site wants to provide, you may be able to install something like PhpBB or one of the free Wikis. Those usually come with a complete user-management system (including self-registration, timeouts, etc...) and write to a MySQL backend, which you can access just as easily with Perl. Some rewriting may let you modify the main functions of the BB or Wiki to use your Perl scripts instead.

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Update: More links:

• http://www.refdev.com/free_scripts/Perl/User_Management/
• http://www.server-scripts.com/page/CGI_and_Perl/User_Management.html
• etc... You can pretty much just throw a rock (or Google search) for 'apache user manager Perl' and get hundreds of hits.

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