Re: [ptxdist] [PATCH] pam: add installation of /sbin/mkhomedir_helper

[Tamino Bauknecht <dev@tb6.eu>]

Hi Ladis,

independent of my use case, I considered this to be a bug because the
library pam_mkhomedir.so is installed on the target but doesn't work
without this addition.

The use case is that when providing an LDAP login via PAM to SSH (for
target maintenance with a central credential management), it can be
convenient to have auto-created home directories for new users. Although
I guess this is not quite the standard use of ptxdist, I think that it
can be misleading to have non-working libraries installed on the device
(especially because a misconfiguration in PAM can lead to trouble with
accessing the target). Since the binary is quite small (~20kB), the 
inclusion
might be worth it even though it won't be required by the majority of users.

On 5/24/23 11:30, Ladislav Michl wrote:
> Hi Tamino,
>
> On Fri, May 19, 2023 at 03:47:10PM +0200, Tamino Bauknecht wrote:
>> This binary is required by the PAM library pam_mkhomedir.so which is
>> installed to '/usr/lib/security'. If used in a PAM configuration, a
>> home directory will be automatically created when a user logs in.
>> Without this helper, the library will fail with an error.
> could you provide more informations about your use case? As PTXdist
> is not normally used to build "user friendly" distribution, there
> are no users logging in...
>
> 	ladis
>
>> Signed-off-by: Tamino Bauknecht<dev@tb6.eu>
>> ---
>>   rules/pam.make | 2 ++
>>   1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)
>>
>> diff --git a/rules/pam.make b/rules/pam.make
>> index 6e97e3320..df86c8da0 100644
>> --- a/rules/pam.make
>> +++ b/rules/pam.make
>> @@ -84,6 +84,8 @@ $(STATEDIR)/pam.targetinstall:
>>   	@$(call install_alternative, pam, 0, 0, 0644, /etc/security/pam_env.conf)
>>   	@$(call install_alternative, pam, 0, 0, 0644, /etc/security/time.conf)
>>   
>> +	@$(call install_alternative, pam, 0, 0, 0755, /sbin/mkhomedir_helper)
>> +
>>   	@$(call install_finish, pam)
>>   
>>   	@$(call touch)
>> -- 
>> 2.40.1
>>