debian man page for pam_ssh

PAM_SSH(8)						    BSD System Manager's Manual 						PAM_SSH(8)

NAME
     pam_ssh -- authentication and session management with SSH private keys

DESCRIPTION
     The SSH authentication service module for PAM, pam_ssh provides functionality for two PAM categories: authentication and session management.

   SSH Authentication Module
     The SSH authentication component verifies the identity of a user by prompting the user for a passphrase and verifying that it can decrypt at
     least one of the user's SSH login keys using that passphrase.

     The following options may be passed to the authentication module:

     debug		     syslog(3) debugging information at LOG_DEBUG level.

     use_first_pass	     If the authentication module is not the first in the stack, and a previous module obtained the user's password, then
			     that password is used to decrypt the user's SSH login keys.  If this fails, then the authentication module returns
			     failure without prompting the user for a passphrase.

     try_first_pass	     Similar to the use_first_pass option, except that if the previously obtained password fails to decrypt any of the SSH
			     login keys, then the user is prompted for an SSH passphrase.

			     try_first_pass has no effect if pam_ssh is the first module on the stack, or if no previous modules obtained the
			     user's password.

     allow_blank_passphrase  Allow SSH keys with no passphrase.

     If neither use_first_pass nor try_first_pass is specified, pam_ssh will unconditionally ask for an SSH passphrase.

     In addition to the above authentication procedure, all standard SSH keys (identity, id_rsa, id_dsa) for which the obtained password matches
     will be decrypted.

   SSH Session Management Module
     The SSH session management component initiates sessions by starting an SSH agent, passing it any SSH login keys it decrypted during the
     authentication phase, and sets the environment variables accordingly.

     The SSH session management component terminates the session by killing the previously started SSH agent by sending it a SIGTERM.

     The following options may be passed to the session management module:

     debug	     syslog(3) debugging information at LOG_DEBUG level.

INFORMATION LEAKS
     Be careful with the using the try_first_pass option when pam_ssh is the first authentication module because it will then leak information
     about existing users without login keys: such users will not be asked for a specific SSH passphrase, whereas non-existing users and existing
     users with login keys will be asked for a passphrase.

FILES
     $HOME/.ssh/identity
     $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa
     $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa	       OpenSSH DSA/RSA keys decrypted by pam_ssh.
     $HOME/.ssh/login-keys.d/  Location of (possibly symbolic links to) OpenSSH DSA/RSA keys used for authentication and decrypted by pam_ssh.
     /var/log/auth.log	       Usual log file for syslog(3)

SEE ALSO
     ssh-agent(1), syslog(3), pam.conf(5), pam(8).

AUTHORS
     Andrew J. Korty <ajk@iu.edu> wrote pam_ssh.  Dag-Erling Smorgrav wrote the original OpenPAM support code.	Mark R V Murray wrote the original
     version of this manual page.  Jens Peter Secher introduced the login-key concept.

BSD
								 November 26, 2001							       BSD