Book Image

Pluggable Authentication Modules: The Definitive Guide to PAM for Linux SysAdmins and C Developers

By : Kenneth Geisshirt
Book Image

Pluggable Authentication Modules: The Definitive Guide to PAM for Linux SysAdmins and C Developers

By: Kenneth Geisshirt

Overview of this book

<p>PAM-aware applications reduce the complexity of authentication. With PAM you can use the same user database for every login process. PAM also supports different authentication processes as required. Moreover, PAM is a well-defined API, and PAM-aware applications will not break if you change the underlying authentication configuration.<br /><br />The PAM framework is widely used by most Linux distributions for authentication purposes. Originating from Solaris 2.6 ten years ago, PAM is used today by most proprietary and free UNIX operating systems including GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris, following both the design concept and the practical details. PAM is thus a unifying technology for authentication mechanisms in UNIX. <br /><br />PAM is a modular and flexible authentication management layer that sits between Linux applications and the native underlying authentication system. PAM can be implemented with various applications without having to recompile the applications to specifically support PAM.</p>
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Pluggable Authentication Modules: The Definitive Guide to PAM for Linux SysAdmins and C Developers

Copyright © 2007 Packt Publishing

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First published: January 2007

Production Reference: 1211206

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-904811-32-9

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