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Name

pam-auth-update - manage PAM configuration using packaged profiles

Synopsis

pam-auth-update [ --package " [" --remove profile " [" profile... "]]]" [ --force ]

Description

pam-auth-update is a utility that permits configuring the central authentication policy for the system using pre-defined profiles as supplied by PAM module packages. Profiles shipped in the /usr/share/pam-configs/ directory specify the modules, with options, to enable; the preferred ordering with respect to other profiles; and whether a profile should be enabled by default. Packages providing PAM modules register their profiles at install time by calling "pam-auth-update --package" .Selection of profiles is done using the standard debconf interface. The profile selection question will be asked at `medium' priority when packages are added or removed, so no user interaction is required by default. Users may invoke pam-auth-update directly to change their authentication configuration.

The script makes every effort to respect local changes to "/etc/pam.d/common-*". Local modifications to the list of module options will be preserved, and additions of modules within the managed portion of the stack will cause pam-auth-update to treat the config files as locally modified and not make further changes to the config files unless given the --force option.

If the user specifies that pam-auth-update should override local configuration changes, the locally-modified files will be saved in /etc/pam.d/ with a suffix of "\.pam-old".

Options

--package Indicate that the caller is a package maintainer script; lowers the priority of debconf questions to `medium' so that the user is not prompted by default.

--enable profile [profile...] Enable the specified profiles in system configuration. This is used to enable profiles that are not on by default.

--remove profile [profile...] Remove the specified profiles from the system configuration. pam-auth-update --remove should be used to remove profiles from the configuration before the modules they reference are removed from disk, to ensure that PAM is in a consistent and usable state at all times during package upgrades or removals.

--force Overwrite the current PAM configuration, without prompting. This option must not be used by package maintainer scripts; it is intended for use by administrators only.

Files

/etc/pam.d/common-* Global configuration of PAM, affecting all installed services.

/usr/share/pam-configs/ Package-supplied authentication profiles.

Author

Steve Langasek <[email protected]>

Copyright

Copyright (C) 2008 Canonical Ltd.

See Also

PAM(7), pam.d(5), debconf(7)