pam_authenticate problem

Jonathon Coombes jon at cybersite.com.au
Fri Sep 28 01:52:16 UTC 2007


Hi,

I am trying to write a simple interface between Lua and PAM  
authentication. I have it compiling and on testing it seems to work  
fine if I use modules such as pam_permit, pam_rootok, pam_stress etc,  
but it fails for pam_unix.so authentication? The details of errors I  
have are as follows:

#lua
Lua 5.1.1  Copyright (C) 1994-2006 Lua.org, PUC-Rio
 > require "pamauth"
 > pamauth.open("jon","test")
*** Attempting to perform PAM initialisation...
Success
*** Attempting to perform PAM authentication...
User: jon
Password: test
21
Authentication information cannot be recovered
 >

Syslog shows nothing. The auth.log shows the following:

Sep 28 11:47:53 mail PAM-warn[4787]: function=[pam_sm_authenticate]  
service=[mysql] terminal=[<unknown>] user=[jon] ruser=[<unknown>]  
rhost=[<unknown>]
Sep 28 11:47:53 mail lua[4787]: (pam_unix) unable to obtain a password
Sep 28 11:47:53 mail lua[4787]: (pam_unix) auth could not identify  
password for [jon]

The user and password exist, but it is like PAM cannot work out the  
file format or something? I am trying this under Ubuntu Linux at the  
moment, if that will make any difference. Also, I have tried setting  
the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files to be world writable (777)  
without any effect. However if I leave out the name, or give a non- 
existent one, the PAM message changes so it appears to work on that  
part.

Any suggestion as to what may be the problem.?

Regards
Jonathon
------------------------------------
Jonathon Coombes - Cybersite Consulting
MySQL Consulting + Training Partner
Authorised MySQL Training Centre
http://www.cybersite.com.au




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