This document is a Mac OS X manual page. Manual pages are a command-line technology for providing documentation. You can view these manual pages locally using the man(1) command. These manual pages come from many different sources, and thus, have a variety of writing styles.

For more information about the manual page format, see the manual page for manpages(5).

PAM_START(3)                           Application Programmers' Manual                          PAM_START(3)



NAME
       pam_start, pam_end - activating Linux-PAM


SYNOPSIS
       #include <security/pam_appl.h>

       int  pam_start(const  char  *service,  const  char  *user,  const struct pam_conv *conv, pam_handle_t
       **pamh_p);

       int pam_end(pam_handle_t *pamh, int pam_status);



DESCRIPTION
       pam_start
              Initialize the Linux-PAM library.  Identifying the application with a particular service name.
              The  username  can take the value NULL, if not known at the time the interface is initialized.
              The conversation structure is passed to the library via the conv argument.   (For  a  complete
              description  of this and other structures the reader is directed to the more verbose Linux-PAM
              application developers' guide).  Upon successful initialization, an opaque pointer-handle  for
              future access to the library is returned through the contents of the pamh_p pointer.


       pam_end
              Terminate  the Linux-PAM library.  The service application associated with the pamh handle, is
              terminated.  The argument, pam_status, passes the value most recently returned to the applica-tion application
              tion  from  the  library;  it  indicates  the  manner in which the library should be shutdown.
              Besides carrying a return value, this argument may be logically OR'd with  PAM_DATA_SILENT  to
              indicate  that  the  module  should  not treat the call too seriously. It is generally used to
              indicate that the current closing of the library is in a fork(2)ed process, and that the  par-ent parent
              ent  will  take  care  of  cleaning  up things that exist outside of the current process space
              (files etc.).


RETURN VALUE
       pam_start

       pam_end
              On success, PAM_SUCCESS is returned


ERRORS
       May be translated to text with pam_strerror(3).


CONFORMING TO
       DCE-RFC 86.0, October 1995.

       Note, the PAM_DATA_SILENT flag is pending acceptance with the DCE (as of 1996/12/4).


BUGS
       None known.


SEE ALSO
       fork(2), pam_authenticate(3), pam_acct_mgmt(3), pam_open_session(3), and pam_chauthtok(3).

       Also, see the three Linux-PAM Guides, for System administrators, module developers,  and  application
       developers.



Linux-PAM 0.56                                   1997 Feb 15                                    PAM_START(3)