Server can't send email -- how do users get their password?

I've just installed Foswiki on a company-internal server, but the server is not allowed to send emails. How then do users receive their initial password?

I've tried to uncheck EnableEmail in the hope that Foswiki would allow password entry during registration, or that the pw would be shown on-screen after registration, but no luck.

So while users can register (and are then logged in until they close the browser), they can't sign in to Foswiki when they return later. The same problem affects the "forgot password" and "reset password" situations, of course.

Answer

It's not pretty, but it's a usable workaround:

1. Start a Putty session to the server.
2. Enter this command: htpasswd -b /path/to/foswiki/data/.htpasswd USER changemenow and replace USER and with the actual usernames.
3. Edit the password file ( nano /path/to/foswiki/data/.htpasswd) and append : and the user's mail address to each line.
4. Save .htpasswd.
5. Notify the users and have them change the password immediately.

That buys me some time to see if I can have someone enable the mailservice on the server.

-- TorbenGB - 08 Jul 2010