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.
