(unknown charset) Re: NSS and PAM

From: (unknown charset) Julian Elischer <julian_at_elischer.org>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 16:28:13 -0800 (PST)
On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Robert Watson wrote:

> 
> On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:
> 
> > Jacques Vidrine <nectar_at_freebsd.org> writes:
> > > Applications that use PAM to change the password when the password
> > > expires seem to work out OK.
> > 
> > This works because each backend knows whether or not the password needs
> > changing (there is a flag to tell the module to only ask for a new
> > password if the current password has expired).  When you are purposedly
> > changing your password before it expires, things are a little less
> > clear. 
> > 
> > Things might be easier if NSS had a proper API which included entry
> > points for storing and updating user information (and not just for
> > retrieving).  Then pam_unix wouldn't need to know anything about
> > /etc/spwd.db or NIS; it would just retrieve the information from NSS,
> > note that the password had expired, ask the user for a new password and
> > tell NSS to store it.
> 
> I think I agree pretty strongly with your earlier comment that the current
> "struct passwd" is simply insufficient for a lot of the things we'd like
> to accomplish.  It's good for UNIX app compatibility and home directory
> expansion, but it sounds like we need a much stronger notion of "user" 
> than we currently have.  We bump into this in the existing of login.conf,
> setusercontext(), and the MAC code.  It might be worth digging into
> Apple's DirectoryServices, as well as Solaris's roles/etc equivilent.

We also desperatly need an interface for opaquely WRITING a password
entry into NIS or flatfile or whatever.
porting npasswd to freeBSD was a pain in the neck because of this..

Npasswd has a "mpasswd" struct that includes the system's
passwd structure but contains a 'per method' pointer and fileds for 
password expiration etc. as well. The interface needs to also
automatically do things like load the login.conf info for the user and
the auth.conf info as well.

I had to do that all by hand in the npasswd port which was a real
annoyance.


> 
> Robert N M Watson             FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects
> robert_at_fledge.watson.org      Senior Research Scientist, McAfee Research
> 
> 
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Received on Thu Dec 04 2003 - 15:28:20 UTC

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