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Article can be summarized: "I didn't knew much about PAM, had random assumption and wasted a bit of time in the process". Not much of the substance unfortunatel

by betaby 4y ago

Article can be summarized: "I didn't knew much about PAM, had random assumption and wasted a bit of time in the process". Not much of the substance unfortunately.

hrbf 4y ago
Years ago, I’ve found an inverse correlation between emoji frequency and information quality. Anime is usually indicative as well, as is excessive use of imagery in general. All together are a dead give-away.
tyingq 4y ago
I found parts of it interesting, but I couldn't tell why the author [edited] was ascribing so many issues to be PAM's fault. Debugging dynamically loaded libraries, for example. Many things use dynamically loaded libraries, and it's not surprising PAM does so, given the need to be "pluggable".
- xena 4y ago
  Author here. I am not male, you are making a factual error by referring to me as such. Please do not do this in the future.
  - tyingq 4y ago
    Edited, though I can't commit to not ever making mistakes in the future :)
    - xena 4y ago
      Somehow that's worse. Is it really that hard to call someone "they"? Please excuse my bluntness, but this is an English language construct that's existed since Beowulf (an epic poem that predates even Middle English). Saying '[edited out "he"]' looks like you are invalidating my own view of my identity. I have to deal with enough of this already. Why do you feel you need to add to the pile? What have I done to deserve such treatment?
      - tyingq 4y ago
        Right, I made a mistake, fixed it, tagged with [edited out "he"] so it wasn't a stealth edit. Now re-edited to just say [edited], since that's also causing unintended issues. I'm not trying to invalidate anything, had no idea of the background. It was just a mistake, nothing more.
      - wtallis 4y ago
kelnos 4y ago
Yeah I was pretty disappointed, was hoping for something more. Most of the problems the author ran into had nothing to do with PAM. Things like "distributions compile PAM without debug logging" (annoying but common) and "PAM is a plugin system, so setting breakpoints is hard because dlsym() is used" (how else would you implement a plugin system in C, without requiring build-time foreknowledge of every plugin that exists?) and then some misconception that this is a "Java kind of thing" because Sun did it (when libdl predates Java and is by no means a Sun-specific thing, even though it was indeed first seen in SunOS). It just felt like reading about someone who hasn't used C all that much, digging into a C-based project and discovering how some not-particularly-esoteric things are usually done in C ("function pointers aren't type-safe!") and then being surprised... and disgusted in a pretty "language elitist" way. PAM is by no means an amazing piece of software. It has some baked-in assumptions that made sense 30 years ago that maybe don't so much these days. And it could be designed in a way that's more secure (though I expect you could reimplement PAM with better isolation while still keeping the API and flexibility). But it's... surprisingly not that bad, considering its age.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  I was really hoping for something that actually explained the history behind PAM and why it is the way it is, because PAM doesn't really make a whole heck of a lot of sense - usually when that's the case, understanding the context it was developed in goes a long way to explaining why it was done the way it was. Definitely not what this article was, though.
kybernetyk 4y ago
At least it has cute anime drawings.
ArchD 4y ago
How can you "know much about PAM", though, other than getting very familiar with source code of PAM, the PAM modules and poorly-documented distro conventions? As the article mention, documentation is scarce, and I cannot agree more. The article is at least showing how bad the situation is. I am rather familiar with various other aspects of Linux system administration, but PAM is a dark corner to me.
bArray 4y ago
Also I'm not entirely sure why HN keeps front-paging people who hate its community.

by betaby 4y ago

Article can be summarized: "I didn't knew much about PAM, had random assumption and wasted a bit of time in the process". Not much of the substance unfortunately.

hrbf 4y ago

Years ago, I’ve found an inverse correlation between emoji frequency and information quality. Anime is usually indicative as well, as is excessive use of imagery in general. All together are a dead give-away.

tyingq 4y ago

I found parts of it interesting, but I couldn't tell why the author [edited] was ascribing so many issues to be PAM's fault. Debugging dynamically loaded libraries, for example. Many things use dynamically loaded libraries, and it's not surprising PAM does so, given the need to be "pluggable".

xena 4y ago
Author here. I am not male, you are making a factual error by referring to me as such. Please do not do this in the future.
- tyingq 4y ago
  Edited, though I can't commit to not ever making mistakes in the future :)
  - xena 4y ago
    Somehow that's worse. Is it really that hard to call someone "they"? Please excuse my bluntness, but this is an English language construct that's existed since Beowulf (an epic poem that predates even Middle English). Saying '[edited out "he"]' looks like you are invalidating my own view of my identity. I have to deal with enough of this already. Why do you feel you need to add to the pile? What have I done to deserve such treatment?
    - tyingq 4y ago
      Right, I made a mistake, fixed it, tagged with [edited out "he"] so it wasn't a stealth edit. Now re-edited to just say [edited], since that's also causing unintended issues. I'm not trying to invalidate anything, had no idea of the background. It was just a mistake, nothing more.
    - wtallis 4y ago

kelnos 4y ago

Yeah I was pretty disappointed, was hoping for something more. Most of the problems the author ran into had nothing to do with PAM. Things like "distributions compile PAM without debug logging" (annoying but common) and "PAM is a plugin system, so setting breakpoints is hard because dlsym() is used" (how else would you implement a plugin system in C, without requiring build-time foreknowledge of every plugin that exists?) and then some misconception that this is a "Java kind of thing" because Sun did it (when libdl predates Java and is by no means a Sun-specific thing, even though it was indeed first seen in SunOS). It just felt like reading about someone who hasn't used C all that much, digging into a C-based project and discovering how some not-particularly-esoteric things are usually done in C ("function pointers aren't type-safe!") and then being surprised... and disgusted in a pretty "language elitist" way. PAM is by no means an amazing piece of software. It has some baked-in assumptions that made sense 30 years ago that maybe don't so much these days. And it could be designed in a way that's more secure (though I expect you could reimplement PAM with better isolation while still keeping the API and flexibility). But it's... surprisingly not that bad, considering its age.

commandlinefan 4y ago
I was really hoping for something that actually explained the history behind PAM and why it is the way it is, because PAM doesn't really make a whole heck of a lot of sense - usually when that's the case, understanding the context it was developed in goes a long way to explaining why it was done the way it was. Definitely not what this article was, though.

kybernetyk 4y ago

At least it has cute anime drawings.

ArchD 4y ago

How can you "know much about PAM", though, other than getting very familiar with source code of PAM, the PAM modules and poorly-documented distro conventions? As the article mention, documentation is scarce, and I cannot agree more. The article is at least showing how bad the situation is. I am rather familiar with various other aspects of Linux system administration, but PAM is a dark corner to me.

bArray 4y ago

Also I'm not entirely sure why HN keeps front-paging people who hate its community.