Subject: Re: integrating PAM
To: Peter Seebach <seebs@plethora.net>
From: Roland Dowdeswell <elric@imrryr.org>
List: current-users
Date: 01/23/2003 14:02:11
On 1043347020 seconds since the Beginning of the UNIX epoch
Peter Seebach wrote:
>

><hypothetical>
>$ grep AUTH /etc/mk.conf
>AUTH_STYLE="PAM"
></hypothetical>
>
>If we did that, we could support both BSD Auth *and* PAM, each "natively", by
>using #ifdefs in the affected programs.  Might not work for everything, but
>it'd be cool.  I would be happy to try to help anyone working on BSD Auth
>stuff.

This is too much maintenance I think.  If we do this, then we have
to maintain BSD Auth in login(1), xdm(1), gdm, kdm, ssh, etc, etc.
I do not think that we want to do that.  We need to present exactly
one interface to userland programs that need to perform authentication
functions and it seems pretty clear that PAM is the only real
contender for this.  Unless we want to write BSD Auth modules for
all manner of applications that do not currently support it.  This
is not a prospect that I think is pleasant, required or desirable.

--
    Roland Dowdeswell                      http://www.Imrryr.ORG/~elric/