libapache2-mod-auth-shadow 2.1-2 (sparc binary) in ubuntu hardy

 When performing this task one encounters one fundamental difficulty: the
 /etc/shadow file is supposed to be read/writable only by root. However,
 the webserver is supposed to run under a non-root user, such as www-data.
 .
 mod_auth_shadow addresses this difficulty by opening a pipe to an SGID shadow
 program validate, which does the actual validation. When there is a failure
 validate writes an error message to the system log, and waits three seconds
 before exiting. The validate program uses getspnam() so supports shadow
 files and NIS.