pam.conf(5) and pam(8)

[Dag-Erling Smørgrav]

Christian Brueffer <chris at unixpages.org> writes:
> NetBSD has both pam.conf(5) and pam(8) that fit with OpenPAM FreeBSD
> uses (NetBSD recently imported OpenPAM as well).  I'll import these
> in the next couple of days.

Allow me to raise a few objections.

First, the reason why we don't have a pam(8) is that we have a rather
comprehensive article about PAM in the doc tree, and I couldn't make
up my mind about how much of it to include in pam(8) and how much to
leave out.  My feeling now is that pam(8) should probably just
reference the article and provide a quick overview of our PAM modules
(with references to their individual man pages).

The reason why we don't have a pam.conf(5) is slightly more complex.
Part of it is that the information that belongs there is already
present in different places in different forms (/etc/pam.d/README for
instance).  Another part is that it is *hard* to describe the meanings
of the control flags both accurately and succintly.  NetBSD didn't get
it quite right.  In addition, their man page is under a four-clause
BSD license, which makes me leery of including it in OpenPAM.

My own attempt is in Perforce:

http://perforce.freebsd.org/fileViewer.cgi?FSPC=//depot/projects/openpam/doc/man/pam.conf.5&REV=2

DES
-- 
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - des at des.no