Users/Groups Managment

Is there an effective way to use the non-privileged users on a system account to use as authentication?

For instance I want to build a internal web application that uses the information from the passwd and shadow file for user information and groups for group information. If that information could already be filled that would save a lot of time.

This application will handle the configuration and setup of a jumpstart server on solaris.

There is a ruby PAM module, but have no idea if it will compile against solaris pam libraries, they are probably different then the linux ones.

Chris