Lost User Account Passwords

[Tim Alberts]

I'm running apache on a FC3 linux box.  I'm trying to make user password
control more available.  I know the passwd command to change user
passwords.  My question is, if a user enters a password and they forget
it, how can they get the password back out of the system without just
re-entering a new one?  

Specifically, I'm using Linux-PAM with shadow passwords.  I don't want
to give users root access.  I'm really trying to create a cgi/bash
script that a user can enter their email address and it will email them
there password.  Seems like a simple thing to do, but I haven't seen a
command to retreive a current user password from Linux-PAM/shadow
passwords.  I could use a MySQL database to keep track of this stuff,
but I prefer to use the security that Linux already provides.  Plus,
then I've got plain text passwords in a database or even if I encrypted
them in the database, I have the passwords in two places and then
there's the risk of them getting out of sink (however small a risk).