Have you tried this plugin?  Remote Login http://community.elgg.org/pg/plugins/project/482039/developer/afiouni/remote-login

I can confirm problem with regular users not having permission to post to the wire, shame as the possibility of modifying riverdashboard by plugin instead of replacing the whole riverdashboard is definitely appealing.

Can't login to my regular account as it uses the openid login option which is not available.  Is there anyway I can access that account without openid?

still unable to sign in with myid.net  - getting message OpenID authentication failed: http://MYUSERNAME.myid.net is not a valid OpenID URL.  

Since Friday I've been unable to signin using my openid info, after entering openid username in login form am taken to a white page which never loads any content.  Hence had to create a new account.