PWAUTH(8) System Manager's Manual PWAUTH(8)NAME
pwauth - authenticator for mod_authnz_external and the Apache HTTP Daemon
SYNOPSIS
pwauth
DESCRIPTION
Pwauth is an authenticator designed to be used with mod_auth_external or mod_authnz_external and the Apache HTTP Daemon to support reason-
ably secure web authentication out of the system password database on most versions of Unix. Particulary - secure authentication against
PAM.
The simplest test pwauth is to start a root shell and just run pwauth. It will attempt to read the login and password from standard input,
so type a login name, hit return, then type a password, and hit return (the password will echo on your screen). The check the status code
that was returned (in csh: "echo $status" in sh: "echo $?").
If the login/password were correct you should get a zero status code. If not, you will get some other value. See below the list of status
codes to find the meaning of the various values returned. Any values 50 or greater indicate a configuration error.
STATUS CODES
0 STATUS_OK
Login OK.
1 STATUS_UNKNOWN
Nonexistant login or (for some configurations) incorrect password.
2 STATUS_INVALID
Incorrect password (for some configurations).
3 STATUS_BLOCKED
Uid number is below MIN_UNIX_UID value configured in config.h.
4 STATUS_EXPIRED
Login ID has expired.
5 STATUS_PW_EXPIRED
Login's password has expired.
6 SSTATUS_NOLOGIN
Logins to system have been turned off (usually by /etc/nologin file).
7 STATUS_MANYFAILES
Limit on number of bad logins exceeded.
50 STATUS_INT_USER
pwauth was invoked by a uid not on the SERVER_UIDS list. If you get this error code, you probably have SERVER_UIDS set incorrectly
in pwauth's config.h file.
51 STATUS_INT_ARGS
pwauth was not given a login & password to check. The means the passing of data from mod_auth_external to pwauth is messed up. Most
likely one is trying to pass data via environment variables, while the other is trying to pass data via a pipe.
52 STATUS_INT_ERR
one of several rare and unlikely internal errors occurred. You'll have to read the source code to figure these out.
53 STATUS_INT_NOROOT
pwauth was not able to read the password database. Usually this means it is not running as root. (PAM and login.conf configurations
will return 1 in this case.)
AUTHOR
pwauth was written by Jan Wolter <jan@unixpapa.com>.
This manual page was written by Hai Zaar <haizaar@haizaar.com>, for the Debian project (but may be used by others).
2009-05-02 PWAUTH(8)
Check Out this Related Man Page
SHADOW(5) File Formats and Conversions SHADOW(5)NAME
shadow - shadowed password file
DESCRIPTION
shadow is a file which contains the password information for the system's accounts and optional aging information.
This file must not be readable by regular users if password security is to be maintained.
Each line of this file contains 9 fields, separated by colons (":"), in the following order:
login name
It must be a valid account name, which exist on the system.
encrypted password
Refer to crypt(3) for details on how this string is interpreted.
If the password field contains some string that is not a valid result of crypt(3), for instance ! or *, the user will not be able to
use a unix password to log in (but the user may log in the system by other means).
This field may be empty, in which case no passwords are required to authenticate as the specified login name. However, some
applications which read the /etc/shadow file may decide not to permit any access at all if the password field is empty.
A password field which starts with an exclamation mark means that the password is locked. The remaining characters on the line
represent the password field before the password was locked.
date of last password change
The date of the last password change, expressed as the number of days since Jan 1, 1970.
The value 0 has a special meaning, which is that the user should change her password the next time she will log in the system.
An empty field means that password aging features are disabled.
minimum password age
The minimum password age is the number of days the user will have to wait before she will be allowed to change her password again.
An empty field and value 0 mean that there are no minimum password age.
maximum password age
The maximum password age is the number of days after which the user will have to change her password.
After this number of days is elapsed, the password may still be valid. The user should be asked to change her password the next time
she will log in.
An empty field means that there are no maximum password age, no password warning period, and no password inactivity period (see below).
If the maximum password age is lower than the minimum password age, the user cannot change her password.
password warning period
The number of days before a password is going to expire (see the maximum password age above) during which the user should be warned.
An empty field and value 0 mean that there are no password warning period.
password inactivity period
The number of days after a password has expired (see the maximum password age above) during which the password should still be accepted
(and the user should update her password during the next login).
After expiration of the password and this expiration period is elapsed, no login is possible using the current user's password. The
user should contact her administrator.
An empty field means that there are no enforcement of an inactivity period.
account expiration date
The date of expiration of the account, expressed as the number of days since Jan 1, 1970.
Note that an account expiration differs from a password expiration. In case of an account expiration, the user shall not be allowed to
login. In case of a password expiration, the user is not allowed to login using her password.
An empty field means that the account will never expire.
The value 0 should not be used as it is interpreted as either an account with no expiration, or as an expiration on Jan 1, 1970.
reserved field
This field is reserved for future use.
FILES
/etc/passwd
User account information.
/etc/shadow
Secure user account information.
/etc/shadow-
Backup file for /etc/shadow.
Note that this file is used by the tools of the shadow toolsuite, but not by all user and password management tools.
SEE ALSO chage(1), login(1), passwd(1), passwd(5), pwck(8), pwconv(8), pwunconv(8), su(1), sulogin(8).
shadow-utils 4.5 01/25/2018 SHADOW(5)