PAM_SM_AUTHENTICATE(3)

NAME
pam_sm_authenticate - PAM service function for user authentication

SYNOPSIS

#include <security/pam_modules.h>

int pam_sm_authenticate(pam_handle_t *pamh, int flags, int argc, const char **argv);

DESCRIPTION

The pam_sm_authenticate function is the service module's implementation of the pam_authenticate(3) interface.

This function performs the task of authenticating the user.

Valid flags, which may be logically OR'd with PAM_SILENT, are:

PAM_SILENT
    Do not emit any messages.

PAM_DISALLOW_NULL_AUTHTOK
    Return PAM_AUTH_ERR if the database of authentication tokens for this authentication mechanism has a NULL entry for the user. Without this flag, such a NULL token will lead to a success without the user being prompted.

RETURN VALUES

PAM_AUTH_ERR
    Authentication failure.

PAM_CRED_INSUFFICIENT
    For some reason the application does not have sufficient credentials to authenticate the user.

PAM_AUTHINFO_UNAVAIL
    The modules were not able to access the authentication information. This might be due to a network or hardware failure etc.

PAM_SUCCESS
    The authentication token was successfully updated.

PAM_USER_UNKNOWN
    The supplied username is not known to the authentication service.

PAM_MAXTRIES
    One or more of the authentication modules has reached its limit of tries authenticating the user. Do not try again.

SEE ALSO

pam(3), pam_authenticate(3), pam_sm_setcred(3), pam_strerror(3), PAM(8)