PAM Components

The PAM software consists of a library, several modules, and a configuration file. New versions of several commands or daemons that take advantage of the PAM interfaces are also included.

The following figure illustrates the relationship between the applications, the PAM library, the pam.conf file, and the PAM modules.

Figure 10–1 How PAM Works

The applications, such as ftp, telnet, and login, use the PAM library to call they configuration policy. The pam.conf file defines which modules to use, and in what order the modules are to be used with each application. Responses from the modules are passed back through the library to the application.

The following sections describe the relationship between the PAM components and the applications.

PAM Library

The PAM library provides the framework to load the appropriate modules and to manage the stacking process. The PAM library provides a generic structure to which all of the modules can plug in. See the pam.3PAM XREF man page for more information.