08-16-2017, 10:43 PM
PAM, is a mechanism to integrate multiple low-level authentication schemes into a high-level application programming interface (API). PAM can do many things for you but the primary focus is to authenticate your users. It also allows to set up the environment the users will work in. a user name and a password has to be provided by the user to authenticate himself and gain access to the system.
Need for PAM
PAM and PAM-aware applications reduce the complexity of authentication. With the use of PAM, the system administrator can choose to use the same user database for every login process of your system. PAM has a well defined API so that the PAM dependent appliations will not crash even when the system administrator changes the underlying settings for the PAM. PAM can be taken advantage of by the application programmers if their application requires some kind of authentication. In this case, much less programming is involved and you don't have to write a complete set of authentication functions. appropriate back end to store user names and passwords can be chosen by the system administrator.
Get the details here:
http://ftp.ofloopub/howtos/dev/Packt.Pub...c.2006.pdf
http://en.wikipediawiki/Pluggable_Authen...on_Modules