PAM_SM_AUTHENTICATE

Section: Linux-PAM Manual (3)
Updated: 03/02/2009
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pam_sm_authenticate - PAM service function for user authentication  

Synopsis

#define PAM_SM_AUTH


#include <security/pam_modules.h>
PAM_EXTERN int pam_sm_authenticate(pam_handle_t *pamh, int flags, int argc, const char **argv);
 

DESCRIPTION

The pam_sm_authenticate function is the service module's implementation of the pam_authenticate(3) interface.

This function performs the task of authenticating the user.

Valid flags, which may be logically OR'd with PAM_SILENT, are:

PAM_SILENT

Do not emit any messages.

PAM_DISALLOW_NULL_AUTHTOK

Return PAM_AUTH_ERR if the database of authentication tokens for this authentication mechanism has a NULL entry for the user. Without this flag, such a NULL token will lead to a success without the user being prompted.
 

RETURN VALUES

PAM_AUTH_ERR

Authentication failure.

PAM_CRED_INSUFFICIENT

For some reason the application does not have sufficient credentials to authenticate the user.

PAM_AUTHINFO_UNAVAIL

The modules were not able to access the authentication information. This might be due to a network or hardware failure etc.

PAM_SUCCESS

The authentication token was successfully updated.

PAM_USER_UNKNOWN

The supplied username is not known to the authentication service.

PAM_MAXTRIES

One or more of the authentication modules has reached its limit of tries authenticating the user. Do not try again.
 

SEE ALSO

pam(3), pam_authenticate(3), pam_sm_setcred(3), pam_strerror(3), PAM(8)