Re: [bug-inetutils] Ftpd is Linux-PAM only.

[Simon Josefsson]

Mats Erik Andersson <address@hidden> writes:

> Dear all,
>
> to my disappointment I observe that the present "ftpd/pam.c"
> is strongly dependent on Linux-PAM, in fact is properly
> working if and only if "pam_ftp.so" by Andrew G. Morgan is
> deployed and used. This in turn depends on the macros
> PAM_INCOMPLETE and PAM_CONV_AGAIN which only exist in
> Lainux-PAM and which are taken from an Openpam Group
> draft no. 8, by the very same A. G. Morgan. Exactly the
> same code base is in use by the Debian package "linux-ftpd",
> so it was clearly copied lazily into GNU Inetutils.
>
> The absence of "pam_ftp.so" will, due to the coding of separate
> calls pam_user() and pam_pass() from "ftpd/ftpd.c", make it
> impossible for non-anonymous user to get access to the FTP daemon.
>
> It is very disturbing to have this very non-portable code,
> so I would like your view on the following suggestion:
>
>   * Protect the present PAM code by a configuration setting,
>     only invoking it on systems with Linux-PAM. Probably
>     all Glibc architectures.
>
>   * Develop a new PAM integration for "ftpd" that is usable on
>     BSD systems, i.e., FreeBSD, NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD, and on Solaris.

I prefer 2) if it doesn't have any significant disadvantages over the
current code.

/Simon