Re: [squid-users] Weird and Frustrating Problem with pam_auth module.

Geordie Williamson wrote:

> helperOpenServers: starting 5 'pam_auth' processes.
>
> It halts here for about five minutes and then states:
>
> WARNING: Cannot run '/usr/local/squid/libexec/squid/pam_auth'.

> I have also written a shell script authenticator which echos something to a
> file as soon as it is run. This confirms that the auth module is not run by
> squid and it is, as it says, that it can't run it.

Ok, so the problem is not with pam_auth, but that Squid cannot start the
auth helpers.

The fact that it halts for 5 minutes makes me suspect there is some
problem with the communication to the child processes. Make sure you
have the loopback interface properly configured (lo, 127.0.0.1), and
communication on this interface is not blocked by any ipchains/iptables
firewalling.

> A friend of mine who has got pam_auth working suggested that I should have
> pam_auth owned by root:root but with the 's' bits set: chmod ug+s pam_auth.
> This didn't help.

Making pam_auth suid root is only needed if you are authenticating to
/etc/shadow. In all other configurations it should not be installed suid
root for security reasons.

Regards
Henrik Nordström
Squid Hacker
Received on Tue Oct 09 2001 - 03:23:05 MDT