User Management Api

I am developing an application suite where users will need to connect to a server and depending on their account type they will be given some services. The server will run Linux. C

Solution 1:

http://web.mit.edu/Kerberos/ Not a drop in solution, but not quite sure what you're looking for.

Solution 2:

You should check out PAM.

For security, you should only do this over SSL so that the user's password is not sent over the wire in cleartext.

Solution 3:

Django is a python framework that provides all these services. It's very modular too, so you only have to use the components that what you want/need.

Its default admin tools provide authentication and authorization. Includes Users, Permissions, Groups, and message queueing.

If you don't want something as high level as a web front end. Twisted provides an authentication/credentials module. (http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/current/core/howto/cred.html)