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Re: PAM questions (was: RE: group 'root' does not exist?!)



On Sun, Sep 17, 2000 at 06:38:13PM +0200, Christian Pernegger wrote:
> > i would recommend against using group root for this purpose, instead
> > add a new group `wheel' and use that.
> 
> <snip good reasons>
> 
> > for pam add this line to the top of your /etc/pam.d/su file:
> > 
> > auth        requisite   pam_wheel.so group=wheel debug
> 
> The example says required, but requisite is the far better choice - thanks!

requisite better replicates the BSD su behaviour where you are not
even given the opertunity to enter a password.  purists may argue that
allowing the user to futily enter passwords is better since it will
give away less, but i say they can figure out you have a wheel group
setup pretty easy anyway.  (gee a wheel group exists with a couple
users but no real files on the system owned by that group, hmm ;-))

> Another question: in /etc/pam.d/login there is a line that causes
> /etc/issue to be shown - it was commented out on my box, still
> an issue is displayed.

login displays /etc/issue on its own without the pam module.  i am not
really sure what pam_issue is for.  i suppose on a purists level login
should not display the issue file, pam_issue should, that leaves the
choice more up to the admin.  i personally don't really care much
since issue is only seen on the console and issue.net only in telnet,
and i don't allow telnet, and im the only one i let on the console...

> I activated it and expected to see the issue line twice, which I
> didn't. What displays issue if the PAM option has no apparent
> effect?

see above.  though that is odd that pam_issue does not appear to work,
or maybe its just smart enough to know the issue is already printed?

-- 
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/

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