Re: [Pam-discuss] Re: pam_smb module and passwd file

[Alexander L. <ale...@sb...>]

On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, Brandon Galbraith wrote:

> Is it possible to have pam_smb to authenticate a user purely off of an
> NT box and not care if they are in the password file? I pam_smb cannot
> do this, is there a module that can?

The problem is that the password file (or the shadow one) is not only
holding the user's encrypted password, but also his/her uid,gid,shell,home
dir etc. which are essential for login.

I am not aware of an NT box that can give your Unix box this kind of
information. Of course I have not tried NT services for Unix yet, but I
personally wouldn't rely on that...

If you want to log in someone, processes (e.g. a shell) need to be started
(owned) by that user, you have to define filesystem privileges etc.

One thing I have seen so far is Linux users being created "on-the-fly" if
they exist in some other database, e.g. an LDAP server, with directories
automounted at login time and unmounted at logoff time... But
unfortunately I am just a user on that system and I couldn't find out how
they did it so far...

regards

Alex