3 ms·

If you need to be root to access Linux PAM, then linux is more fucked up than I thought. > Its just a profoundly ignorant dismissal. and its this FOSS jerk at

• barrkel 12y ago
  It's not just authentication, it's authorization. Files should be accessed with the identity of the remote user in order to present a consistent view of the file system, test and set permissions consistently, and set ownership consistently. It's either that, or build a completely parallel permissions and ownership system maintained in a separate database, with mappings per file, etc. (Samba kind of does build a parallel system, but it's not completely parallel. Technically I think it could be possible to improve, so that Samba forks off subprocesses that switch identity based on the connected user's supplied credentials interacting with PAM etc., but that's not how it's done, and I don't know enough of the details of CIFS authentication to know if there's roadblockers there.)
  • praseodym 12y ago
    Samba's smbd forks subprocesses with the connected user's account, so I think this is done whenever possible.
    • tedunangst 12y ago
      Worth repeating that it's hard to change uid to the connected user if you don't start as root.