Python Unix authentication

Question

I need to do a simple authentication of username's which are on the host and NIS. I am writing this code in Python.
I tried using PAM to do authentication. For this I downloaded a Python module called Python Pam.

The code I use :

import pam   
pam.authenticate('root',<password>,<service>)

where <service> is a config file I created in /etc/pam.d/
the file contains the following code

#%PAM-1.0
auth     requisite      pam_unix.so

This code works on certain hosts giving the correct answer, but not on others
Even if I replaced <service> with login or sshd as in

pam.authenticate('root',<password>,'sshd')

It still returns False for a correct password on certain hosts.

So does anybody know why this does not work. I don't need to use pam or any module. Is there any command in unix that I can invoke from Python which would just authenticate a username? and preferably work across all unix based systems including Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX.
Thanks

Is it possible for you to conduct further trials with other usernames? For example, the usual default configuration of sshd won't allow root at all, as a security measure. — Ulrich Schwarz
– Ulrich Schwarz, Commented Jan 3, 2011 at 19:13

Lennart Regebro · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-03 20:33:59Z

1

Both

 pam.authenticate('myusername', 'mypassword', 'sshd')

and

 pam.authenticate('myusername', 'mypassword')

Login works fine on my machine. The documentation for the pam module is pretty much non-existent, so if you configured your service correctly or not is hard for me to say.

answered Jan 3, 2011 at 20:33

Lennart Regebro

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Marko · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-03 16:39:42Z

1

The answer to that lies in the third parameter in the /etc/pam.d/ file you created.

Try this command on the machines where it does not work. Yes, you must be root or sudoer root.

# ldconfig -v |grep pam_unix.so

Most likely a symlink does not lead to the real pam shared library from pam_unix.so. Add it or change the config file parameter to something that ld can use to find the link.

edited Oct 3, 2012 at 16:39

Marko

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answered Aug 22, 2012 at 23:38

zakhur

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