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On 01/19/2010 10:26 AM, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: |
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> On 01/19/2010 07:55 PM, walt wrote: |
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>> On 01/18/2010 04:41 PM, walt wrote: |
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>> |
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>>> Here is what I see on both machines: |
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>>> |
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>>> $su |
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>>> Password: <===== I type Ctrl-d here |
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>>> Segmentation fault |
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>>> |
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>>> I've traced this problem to the pam_ssh package, which is supposed |
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>>> to return a charstring containing the typed password, but it instead |
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>>> returns a null pointer when I type Ctrl-d. Calamity ensues. |
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>> |
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>> The key here is the pam_ssh package, which apparently the rest of you |
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>> don't use for authentication. |
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> |
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> 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 |
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> depclean.) The system works exactly the same as before. So I'm left wondering what PAM was doing in the first place? |
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I'm no expert on PAM, but I've seen it used on every linux distribution |
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that I've tried over the years. In the case I just described, I used it |
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so I can identify myself with my ssh key, which is much more secure than |
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a password. So, in general, pam is used to set security policy for how |
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users can log in, change their passwords, etc. I'm not sure how I would |
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have added ssh key authentication without pam. It's a good question. |
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