Re: [Proposal] Forget PAM, stick with NSS
Matt Ryan <matt@banana.org.uk> writes:
> I'm a big fan of small dependancies for packages. I can't see any reason why
> we should start PAMifing packages when AFAICS it only gives the same
> functionality as the NSS part of glibc. I have setup libnss-ldap and it works
> very well - why would I need PAM?
PAM handles a lot of stuff that NSS doesn't, including password
changing, password timeouts, explicit customization of authentication
(you can configure whether or not rhosts, securetty, etc is used on an
application by application basis), more complicated login schemes - I
believe stuff like the S/Key authentication scheme and various secure
id card schemes can't be done with just NSS.
I think the PAM FAQ has a more detailed explanation of why PAM is
orthogonal to NSS.
Steve
dunham@cse.msu.edu
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