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Author: Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>
Modified by: Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org>
Objective: To document a base set of policies regarding PAM (Pluggable
Authentication Modules) usage in Debian packages.
===========================================================================
In order to have a consistent and stable implementation across packages
that use PAM, these guidelines will help to avoid some common mistakes and
be usable as a cross reference for FAQ's.
This document will not go into the details of how to add PAM usage to
existing code, please read the documentation in the libpam-doc package for
info on this, however it does specify behavior needed to make sure PAM
modules in Debian will work with your application.
==================
PAM Applications
==================
Each application that uses PAM also must contain a file in
/etc/pam.d/. This file specifies which PAM modules will be used for
the common PAM functions in that application. There are several notes
concerning what modules to use in this file. Most commonly, this file
should use the @include directive to include common-auth,
common-session, common-account and common-password. Under some
circumstances (such as ftp auth, or auth based on tty) other modules
will be required.
Here is an example of a PAM configuration file that just includes the common module fragments:
#
# /etc/pam.d/other - specify the PAM fallback behaviour
#
# Note that this file is used for any unspecified service; for example
#if /etc/pam.d/cron specifies no session modules but cron calls
#pam_open_session, the session module out of /etc/pam.d/other is
#used. If you really want nothing to happen then use pam_permit.so or
#pam_deny.so as appropriate.
# We fall back to the system default in /etc/pam.d/common-*
#
@include common-auth
@include common-account
@include common-password
@include common-session
The name of this file is determined by the call to pam_start() in the
application source code. The first parameter will be a string containing
the "service" name (eg. "login", "httpd", etc..). Please make sure that
the filename coincides with this parameter.
The file should _not_ reference the full path of the modules. It only needs
to reference the basename (eg. "pam_unix.so"). This will ensure that the
program continues to work even if the module location changes, since
libpam itself will resolve the location.
You should not use the pam_stack module in the pam config file.
It's not currently in Debian so it won't work. While I cannot stop
someone from packaging pam_stack for Debian, I will try to convince
them that it is not the direction we want. Pam_stack (among other
faults) uses different pam handles for each step in the process--the
handle used for session management is not the same as the handle used
for authentication. This breaks several modules. We have an alternate
solution for shared PAM configuration across modules, in the form of
the @include directive.
Currently libpam-modules is in the base setup, so it's dependency is not
needed (since the library depends on the correct version). However, if any
modules other than the base set in libpam-modules are used, that package
must be depended on.
Applications need to depend on libpam-runtime (>= 0.76-14) to
guarantee that /etc/pam.d/common-* exist.
The pam_unix.so module allows programs to verify the authentication of the
uid of the calling process without any set bits (uid or gid). NOTE: this
means the user executing the program, you cannot authenticate against other
users without suid root (root makes sure the NIS and NIS+ works too) or
at least sgid shadow (wont work in the above cases). Most notably this
affects programs like apache from being able to use PAM with much success
since it runs as www-data which has no priviledges and cannot use pam_unix.so
to auth against other users. On the other hand is does allow program like
vlock to auth (but not auth the root password).
The application needs to follow the following rules to make sure PAM
modules work:
1) Use the same PAM handle for all operations. This means it is not OK
to call pam_start once for authentication and then later for session
management. Modules need to be able to store pam_data between entry
points.
2) The pam_open_session and pam_setcred calls must be made in a parent
process of the eventual session. They need to be able to enfluence
the environment of the session.
3) If you are started as root or have root privs for some other
reason, pam_open_session and pam_setcred should be called while still
root.
4) Implied by 1, make sure that pam_close_session and pam_end are
called in the same process or a process decended from the execution
context as pam_open_session and pam_setcred. The pam_close_session
call may need state stored in the handle by the open session entry
point to clean up properly. The pam_finish call may need to free data
(thus influencing system state in some cases) allocated in the earlier
calls.
=============
PAM Modules
=============
Separately packaged pam modules should adhere to a few basic setup rules:
1) Packages should use the naming scheme of `libpam-<name>' (eg.
libpam-ldap).
2) The modules should be located in the directory of the most recent
libpam-modules (currently /lib/security).
3) The module should be named as pam_<name>.so. The module should not
contain a version suffix.
4) The module should be linked to libpam (-lpam) when compiled so that
proper version dependencies will work.
5) Any config files should be located in /etc/security. The filename
will be in the form of <name>.conf.
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