[Mageia-dev] absurd comment in default sshd configuration file

Tue May 15 16:34:14 CEST 2012

'Twas brillig, and Guillaume Rousse at 15/05/12 15:02 did gyre and gimble:
+> # WARNING: 'UsePAM no' is not supported in Mageia and may cause several
+> # problems.
+> I wonder about the usefulness of such comment...
+> 
+> What does means 'not supported' ? The software has been patched, and its
+> behaviour changed in such a way that it will not work as documented ? Or
+> any bug report on bugzilla will automatically result in a question 'did
+> you change UsePAM directive in sshd' before even attempting to identify
+> end user problem ?
+> 
+> And as changing ANY configuration directive in ANY software may result
+> in problems, what's the point of a specific warning here ?
+> 
+> So, what's the added value of this comment over default configuration ?
+
+I didn't specifically think too hard about putting a comment in the
+config file but I stand by it's usefulness.
+
+Patch taken directly from Fedora | sed s/Fedora/Mageia/
+
+The point of it is that if you turn off PAM support you may have issues
+with tracking logins via SSH (i.e. pam_systemd will not be processed and
+user sessions will be tracked as child processes of the ssh daemon
+service itself and not as child processes of a user session. This means
+that restarting SSH service will likely kill off any ssh connections,
+including the current one if you set "UsePAM no".
+
+As this is an issue that has confused several people, I think extra
+exposure is a good thing. If you want to deal with the bugs resulting
+from incorrect settings and explain to people again and again, then
+fine, we can remove it.
+
+Col
+
+
+
+-- 
+
+Colin Guthrie
+colin(at)mageia.org
+http://colin.guthr.ie/
+
+Day Job:
+  Tribalogic Limited http://www.tribalogic.net/
+Open Source:
+  Mageia Contributor http://www.mageia.org/
+  PulseAudio Hacker http://www.pulseaudio.org/
+  Trac Hacker http://trac.edgewall.org/
+