[MAN] pam

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PAM.CONF

Section: Linux-PAM Manual (5)
Updated: 09/19/2013
Index Return to Main Contents

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NAME

pam.conf, pam.d - PAM configuration files  

DESCRIPTION

When a PAM aware privilege granting application is started, it activates its attachment to the PAM-API. This activation performs a number of tasks, the most important being the reading of the configuration file(s): /etc/pam.conf. Alternatively, this may be the contents of the /etc/pam.d/ directory. The presence of this directory will cause Linux-PAM to ignore /etc/pam.conf.

These files list the PAMs that will do the authentication tasks required by this service, and the appropriate behavior of the PAM-API in the event that individual PAMs fail.

The syntax of the /etc/pam.conf configuration file is as follows. The file is made up of a list of rules, each rule is typically placed on a single line, but may be extended with an escaped end of line: `\<LF>'. Comments are preceded with `#' marks and extend to the next end of line.

The format of each rule is a space separated collection of tokens, the first three being case-insensitive:

service type control module-path module-arguments

The syntax of files contained in the /etc/pam.d/ directory, are identical except for the absence of any service field. In this case, the service is the name of the file in the /etc/pam.d/ directory. This filename must be in lower case.

An important feature of PAM, is that a number of rules may be stacked to combine the services of a number of PAMs for a given authentication task.

The service is typically the familiar name of the corresponding application: login and su are good examples. The service-name, other, is reserved for giving default rules. Only lines that mention the current service (or in the absence of such, the other entries) will be associated with the given service-application.

The type is the management group that the rule corresponds to. It is used to specify which of the management groups the subsequent module is to be associated with. Valid entries are:

account

this module type performs non-authentication based account management. It is typically used to restrict/permit access to a service based on the time of day, currently available system resources (maximum number of users) or perhaps the location of the applicant user -- 'root' login only on the console.

auth

this module type provides two aspects of authenticating the user. Firstly, it establishes that the user is who they claim to be, by instructing the application to prompt the user for a password or other means of identification. Secondly, the module can grant group membership or other privileges through its credential granting properties.

password

this module type is required for updating the authentication token associated with the user. Typically, there is one module for each 'challenge/response' based authentication (auth) type.

session

this module type is associated with doing things that need to be done for the user before/after they can be given service. Such things include the logging of information concerning the opening/closing of some data exchange with a user, mounting directories, etc.

If the type value from the list above is prepended with a - character the PAM library will not log to the system log if it is not possible to load the module because it is missing in the system. This can be useful especially for modules which are not always installed on the system and are not required for correct authentication and authorization of the login session.

The third field, control, indicates the behavior of the PAM-API should the module fail to succeed in its authentication task. There are two types of syntax for this control field: the simple one has a single simple keyword; the more complicated one involves a square-bracketed selection of value=action pairs.

For the simple (historical) syntax valid control values are:

required

failure of such a PAM will ultimately lead to the PAM-API returning failure but only after the remaining stacked modules (for this service and type) have been invoked.

requisite

like required, however, in the case that such a module returns a failure, control is directly returned to the application or to the superior PAM stack. The return value is that associated with the first required or requisite module to fail. Note, this flag can be used to protect against the possibility of a user getting the opportunity to enter a password over an unsafe medium. It is conceivable that such behavior might inform an attacker of valid accounts on a system. This possibility should be weighed against the not insignificant concerns of exposing a sensitive password in a hostile environment.

sufficient

if such a module succeeds and no prior required module has failed the PAM framework returns success to the application or to the superior PAM stack immediately without calling any further modules in the stack. A failure of a sufficient module is ignored and processing of the PAM module stack continues unaffected.

optional

the success or failure of this module is only important if it is the only module in the stack associated with this service+type.

include

include all lines of given type from the configuration file specified as an argument to this control.

substack

include all lines of given type from the configuration file specified as an argument to this control. This differs from include in that evaluation of the done and die actions in a substack does not cause skipping the rest of the complete module stack, but only of the substack. Jumps in a substack also can not make evaluation jump out of it, and the whole substack is counted as one module when the jump is done in a parent stack. The reset action will reset the state of a module stack to the state it was in as of beginning of the substack evaluation.

For the more complicated syntax valid control values have the following form:

      [value1=action1 value2=action2 ...]
    

Where valueN corresponds to the return code from the function invoked in the module for which the line is defined. It is selected from one of these: success, open_err, symbol_err, service_err, system_err, buf_err, perm_denied, auth_err, cred_insufficient, authinfo_unavail, user_unknown, maxtries, new_authtok_reqd, acct_expired, session_err, cred_unavail, cred_expired, cred_err, no_module_data, conv_err, authtok_err, authtok_recover_err, authtok_lock_busy, authtok_disable_aging, try_again, ignore, abort, authtok_expired, module_unknown, bad_item, conv_again, incomplete, and default.

The last of these, default, implies 'all valueN's not mentioned explicitly. Note, the full list of PAM errors is available in /usr/include/security/_pam_types.h. The actionN can take one of the following forms:

ignore

when used with a stack of modules, the module's return status will not contribute to the return code the application obtains.

bad

this action indicates that the return code should be thought of as indicative of the module failing. If this module is the first in the stack to fail, its status value will be used for that of the whole stack.

die

equivalent to bad with the side effect of terminating the module stack and PAM immediately returning to the application.

ok

this tells PAM that the administrator thinks this return code should contribute directly to the return code of the full stack of modules. In other words, if the former state of the stack would lead to a return of PAM_SUCCESS, the module's return code will override this value. Note, if the former state of the stack holds some value that is indicative of a modules failure, this 'ok' value will not be used to override that value.

done

equivalent to ok with the side effect of terminating the module stack and PAM immediately returning to the application.

N (an unsigned integer)

equivalent to ok with the side effect of jumping over the next N modules in the stack. Note that N equal to 0 is not allowed (and it would be identical to ok in such case).

reset

clear all memory of the state of the module stack and start again with the next stacked module.

Each of the four keywords: required; requisite; sufficient; and optional, have an equivalent expression in terms of the [...] syntax. They are as follows:

required

[success=ok new_authtok_reqd=ok ignore=ignore default=bad]

requisite

[success=ok new_authtok_reqd=ok ignore=ignore default=die]

sufficient

[success=done new_authtok_reqd=done default=ignore]

optional

[success=ok new_authtok_reqd=ok default=ignore]

module-path is either the full filename of the PAM to be used by the application (it begins with a '/'), or a relative pathname from the default module location: /lib/security/ or /lib64/security/, depending on the architecture.

module-arguments are a space separated list of tokens that can be used to modify the specific behavior of the given PAM. Such arguments will be documented for each individual module. Note, if you wish to include spaces in an argument, you should surround that argument with square brackets.

    squid auth required pam_mysql.so user=passwd_query passwd=mada \
          db=eminence [query=select user_name from internet_service \
          where user_name='%u' and password=PASSWORD('%p') and \
        service='web_proxy']
    

When using this convention, you can include `[' characters inside the string, and if you wish to include a `]' character inside the string that will survive the argument parsing, you should use `\]'. In other words:

    [..[..\]..]    -->   ..[..]..
    

Any line in (one of) the configuration file(s), that is not formatted correctly, will generally tend (erring on the side of caution) to make the authentication process fail. A corresponding error is written to the system log files with a call to syslog(3).

More flexible than the single configuration file is it to configure libpam via the contents of the /etc/pam.d/ directory. In this case the directory is filled with files each of which has a filename equal to a service-name (in lower-case): it is the personal configuration file for the named service.

The syntax of each file in /etc/pam.d/ is similar to that of the /etc/pam.conf file and is made up of lines of the following form:

type  control  module-path  module-arguments
    

The only difference being that the service-name is not present. The service-name is of course the name of the given configuration file. For example, /etc/pam.d/login contains the configuration for the login service.  

SEE ALSO

pam(3), PAM(8), pam_start(3)

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Index

NAME

DESCRIPTION

SEE ALSO

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pam

Section: File Formats (5)
Updated: 31 July 2000
Index Return to Main Contents

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NAME

pam - portable arbitrary map file format

 

DESCRIPTION

The PAM image format is a lowest common denominator 2 dimensional map format.

It is designed to be used for any of myriad kinds of graphics, but can theoretically be used for any kind of data that is arranged as a two dimensional rectangular array. Actually, from another perspective it can be seen as a format for data arranged as a three dimensional array.

This format does not define the meaning of the data at any particular point in the array. It could be red, green, and blue light intensities such that the array represents a visual image, or it could be the same red, green, and blue components plus a transparency component, or it could contain annual rainfalls for places on the surface of the Earth. Any process that uses the PAM format must further define the format to specify the meanings of the data.

A PAM image describes a two dimensional grid of tuples. The tuples are arranged in rows and columns. The width of the image is the number of columns. The height of the image is the number of rows. All rows are the same width and all columns are the same height. The tuples may have any degree, but all tuples have the same degree. The degree of the tuples is called the depth of the image. Each member of a tuple is called a sample. A sample is an unsigned integer which represents a locus along a scale which starts at zero and ends at a certain maximum value greater than zero called the maxval. The maxval is the same for every sample in the image. The two dimensional array of all the Nth samples of each tuple is called the Nth plane or Nth channel of the image.

Though the format does not assign any meaning to the tuple values, it does include an optional string that describes that meaning. The contents of this string, called the tuple type, are arbitrary from the point of view of the PAM format, but users of the format may assign meaning to it by convention so they can identify their particular implementations of the PAM format.

 

The Layout

A PAM file consists of a sequence of one or more PAM images. There are no data, delimiters, or padding before, after, or between images.

Each PAM image consists of a header followed immediately by a raster.

Here is an example header:

P7
WIDTH 227
HEIGHT 149
DEPTH 3
MAXVAL 255
TUPLTYPE RGB
ENDHDR

The header begins with the ASCII characters "P7" followed by newline. This is the magic number.

The header continues with an arbitrary number of lines of ASCII text. Each line ends with and is delimited by a newline character.

Each header line consists of zero or more whitespace-delimited tokens or begins with "#". If it begins with "#" it is a comment and the rest of this specification does not apply to it.

A header line which has zero tokens is valid but has no meaning.

The type of header line is identified by its first token, which is 8 characters or less:

ENDHDR

This is the last line in the header. The header must contain exactly one of these header lines.

HEIGHT

The second token is a decimal number representing the height of the image (number of rows). The header must contain exactly one of these header lines.

WIDTH

The second token is a decimal number representing the width of the image (number of columns). The header must contain exactly one of these header lines.

DEPTH

The second token is a decimal number representing the depth of the image (number of planes or channels). The header must contain exactly one of these header lines.

MAXVAL

The second token is a decimal number representing the maxval of the image. The header must contain exactly one of these header lines.

TUPLTYPE

The header may contain any number of these header lines, including zero. The rest of the line is part of the tuple type. The rest of the line is not tokenized, but the tuple type does not include any white space immediately following TUPLTYPE or at the very end of the line. It does not include a newline. If there are multiple TUPLTYPE header lines, the tuple type is the concatenation of the values from each of them, separated by a single blank, in the order in which they appear in the header. If there are no TUPLTYPE header lines the tuple type is the null string.

The raster consists of each row of the image, in order from top to bottom, consecutive with no delimiter of any kind between, before, or after, rows.

Each row consists of every tuple in the row, in order from left to right, consecutive with no delimiter of any kind between, before, or after, tuples.

Each tuple consists of every sample in the tuple, in order, consecutive with no delimiter of any kind between, before, or after, samples.

Each sample consists of an unsigned integer in pure binary format, with the most significant byte first. The number of bytes is the minimum number of bytes required to represent the maxval of the image.

 

PAM Used For PNM (PBM, PGM, or PPM) Images

A common use of PAM images is to represent the older and more concrete PBM, PGM, and PPM images.

A PBM image is conventionally represented as a PAM image of depth 1 with maxval 1 where the one sample in each tuple is 0 to represent a black pixel and 1 to represent a white one. The height, width, and raster bear the obvious relationship to those of the PBM image. The tuple type for PBM images represented as PAM images is conventionally "BLACKANDWHITE".

A PGM image is conventionally represented as a PAM image of depth 1. The maxval, height, width, and raster bear the obvious relationship to those of the PGM image. The tuple type for PGM images represented as PAM images is conventionally "GRAYSCALE".

A PPM image is conventionally represented as a PAM image of depth 3. The maxval, height, width, and raster bear the obvious relationship to those of the PPM image. The first plane represents red, the second green, and the third blue. The tuple type for PPM images represented as PAM images is conventionally "RGB".

 

The Confusing Universe of Netpbm Formats

It is easy to get confused about the relationship between the PAM format and PBM, PGM, PPM, and PNM. Here is a little enlightenment:

"PNM" is not really a format. It is a shorthand for the PBM, PGM, and PPM formats collectively. It is also the name of a group of library functions that can each handle all three of those formats.

"PAM" is in fact a fourth format. But it is so general that you can represent the same information in a PAM image as you can in a PBM, PGM, or PPM image. And in fact a program that is designed to read PBM, PGM, or PPM and does so with a recent version of the Netpbm library, will read an equivalent PAM image just fine and the program will never know the difference.

To confuse things more, there is a collection of library routines called the "pam" functions that read and write the PAM format, but also read and write the PBM, PGM, and PPM formats. They do this because the latter formats are much older and more popular, so this makes it convenient to write programs that use the newer PAM format.

 

SEE ALSO

pbm(5), pgm(5), ppm(5), pnm(5), libpnm(3)

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Index

NAME

DESCRIPTION

The Layout

PAM Used For PNM (PBM, PGM, or PPM) Images

The Confusing Universe of Netpbm Formats

SEE ALSO

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