Re: PAM applications running as root (Was Re: WebTrends Enterprise

Alan Cox (alanLXORGUK.UKUU.ORG.UK)
Fri, 15 Oct 1999 17:51:15 +0100

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> It is NOT a requirement of the PAM framework that application be running as
> root. There are two cases though that make login type applications need to
> run as root.
>
> 1) The password is stored in /etc/shadow which only root can read
> If the password was in NIS/NIS+/LDAP then the authentication
> could succeed are an ordinary user.

This is not correct either. A good PAM implementation supports shadow
authentication (although not update) via setuid helpers

Alan

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