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From: Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de>
Subject: [gentoo-user] Re: A quick test of su [SOLVED]
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:06:34 +0200
Organization: Lucas Barks
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On 01/20/2010 11:39 PM, walt wrote:
> On 01/19/2010 10:26 AM, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>> On 01/19/2010 07:55 PM, walt wrote:
>>> On 01/18/2010 04:41 PM, walt wrote:
>>>
>>>> Here is what I see on both machines:
>>>>
>>>> $su
>>>> Password: <===== I type Ctrl-d here
>>>> Segmentation fault
>>>>
>>>> I've traced this problem to the pam_ssh package, which is supposed
>>>> to return a charstring containing the typed password, but it instead
>>>> returns a null pointer when I type Ctrl-d. Calamity ensues.
>>>
>>> The key here is the pam_ssh package, which apparently the rest of you
>>> don't use for authentication.
>>
>> Just a quick question: what do you need PAM for? No it's not a
>> rhetorical question. I always wondered what PAM is good for; to find
>> out, I completely removed everything PAM related from my system
>> ("-pam" in make.conf and then rebuild everything and then
>> depclean.) The system works exactly the same as before. So I'm left
>> wondering what PAM was doing in the first place?
>
> I'm no expert on PAM, but I've seen it used on every linux distribution
> that I've tried over the years. In the case I just described, I used it
> so I can identify myself with my ssh key, which is much more secure than
> a password. So, in general, pam is used to set security policy for how
> users can log in, change their passwords, etc. I'm not sure how I would
> have added ssh key authentication without pam. It's a good question.
Well, all of this is still working here without PAM, including keys
(I've set that option in the config file of the ssh deamon, not PAM.)