Pluggable authentication modules (PAM) provide system entry applications with authentication and related security services. This chapter is intended for developers of system entry applications who wish to provide authentication, account management, session management, and password management through PAM modules. There is also information for designers of PAM service modules.
The following topics are discussed:
PAM was originally developed at Oracle. The PAM specification has since been submitted to X/Open, which is now the Open Group. The PAM specification is available in X/Open Single Sign-On Service (XSSO) - Pluggable Authentication, Open Group, UK ISBN 1-85912-144-6 June 1997. The Oracle Solaris implementation of PAM is described in the pam(3PAM), libpam(3LIB), and pam_sm(3PAM) man pages.