Importing Unix users and passwords?

[ducasi]

Hi,

I'm about to start hacking vBulletin (and the mysql databases) to allow me to ...

1) import a large group of users from our unix password file
2) allow vbulletin to use the unix passwords from same.
3) syncronise passwords from unix password file.

An alternative would be to ...

1) import a large group of users from our unix password file
2) allow vbulletin to authenticate using the password file, or equivalent, rather than the sql database.

I'm interested in hearing any previous experiences or pointers to existing hacks that I may have missed in my searches...

Thanks!