User Authentication with PAM
Traditionally, with very few exceptions, user authentication on Unix systems occurs at login time. In recent years, however, a new scheme has emerged that allows the authentication process to be performed and customized for a variety of system contexts. This functionality is provided by the PAM facility.
PAM stands for Pluggable Authentication Modules. PAM is a general user authentication facility available under and provided by current versions of FreeBSD, HP-UX, Linux, and Solaris. PAM’s goal is to provide a flexible and administrator-configurable mechanism for authenticating users, independent of the various programs and facilities which require authentication services. In this way, programs can be developed independently of any specific user-authentication scheme instead of having one explicitly or implicitly embedded within them. When using this approach, utilities call various authentication modules at runtime to perform the actual user-validation process, and the utilities then act appropriately depending on the results the modules return to them.
There are several components to the PAM facility:
PAM-aware versions of traditional Unix authentication programs (for example,
loginandpasswd). Such programs are referred to as services.Modules to perform various specific authentication tasks. These are implemented as shared libraries (.so files), stored in /lib/security under Linux, /usr/lib/security under Solaris and HP-UX, and in /usr/lib under FreeBSD. ...
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