Re: mod_auth_pam

[Ingo Luetkebohle <ingo@blank.pages.de>]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2001 at 01:41:09PM -0500, Ben Collins wrote:
> Not sure about your error message, but pam_unix.so cannot be used under
> mod_auth_pam.

Uh, it cannot be used to authenticate from /etc/shadow --
authenticating from /etc/passwd works fine!

> So you see, it cannot authenticate for say "joe". I'm pretty sure the
> mod_auth_pam docs mention this, and possible workarounds.

There are basically two:
	1) making /etc/shadow readable to apache (not recommended)
	2) use mod_auth_external which has a more liberal helper
	   application

I might add at this point, that in light of the above, the decision
for the PAM supplied helper app not to authenticate other UID's than
the calling one seems more and more dubious to me. YMMV, of course.

Ingo