using an access prog with readers.conf

[jarrell at solaris.cc.vt.edu]

Ok, I must not be understand some interaction here...

Up until now, unless you came from particular hosts, we didn't allow
access to the server.  Now we want to allow you to authenticate against
our local auth system if you're coming from outside.  Pretty straight
forward.  Since I was doing hosts before, my auth file consists of 
a bunch of 

auth "foo" {
	hosts: "whatever"
	default: "<token>"
}

For each type of access category, and a handful of matching access
categories, one each with a users: "<token>" that matches an auth.
Works fine, lets in the hosts, and matches them to the right 
access rights, or denies, as appropriate.

So now I added, as the first auth entry:

auth "anyone" {
    auth: "/home/jarrell/news_auth"
}

I've verified that news_auth can be run by news, and seems to generate
the correct dialogs.  (In fact, just now, I ^z'd out of this, and 
substituted ckpasswd as a test, and it does the same thing.)  One of
the things news_auth does (now) is create a file in /tmp as a sign it
did something.  So far as I can tell, although I can now connect
from an outside host, and it lets me (rather than just telling me
I have no permission), and I can issue the authinfo commands, it's
never actually *running* the auth prog.  Or logging why.  

What, assuming it's not file permissions, would keep it from running
the auth prog?  It won't run ckpasswd either.  Interestingly, I don't
even get the "502 Authentication error", it just plain hangs up...