From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG  Wed Dec  7 08:39:49 2005
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Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 08:39:39 +0000
From: Brian Candler <B.Candler@pobox.com>
To: Brooks Davis <brooks@one-eyed-alien.net>
Message-ID: <20051207083939.GA13055@uk.tiscali.com>
References: <43957D3F.4070109@rsu.ru> <4395DC82.1080103@elischer.org>
	<20051206193317.GB31292@odin.ac.hmc.edu>
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Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, freebsd-current@freebsd.org,
	Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org>, Michael Bushkov <bushman@rsu.ru>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] nsswitch extensions + caching
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On Tue, Dec 06, 2005 at 11:33:17AM -0800, Brooks Davis wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 06, 2005 at 10:46:26AM -0800, Julian Elischer wrote:
> > Michael Bushkov wrote:
> > [...]
> > 
> > so, I've been wonderring.. what's all the fuss about nsswitch?
> > what does it get us?
> 
> It gives us the ability use modules to provide arbitrary backends for a
> variety of interfaces to system databases.  For instance getpw*(),
> gethost*(), etc.

Or put it another way - it supplies the missing half to PAM.

Whilst PAM can check your password using arbitary backend modules, it can't
return your $HOME directory or the uid/gid to use.

Regards,

Brian.