[PAM-NTDOM] using pam_ntdom for ftp authentication

Peter Samuelson peter at cadcamlab.org
Thu Jun 15 02:01:48 GMT 2000


[Steve Langasek <vorlon at netexpress.net>]
> So any fix to the libraries should also change the way Samba
> interfaces with the libraries.

Yes.

> Simply saying "Don't output anything" isn't a good solution in many
> cases.  There are some PAMified applications (graphical apps, for
> example) where it /is/ desirable to receive this output, but /not/ on
> stdout/stderr, which is discarded.

I haven't looked at libsmb, but if it is anything like most libraries,
then "don't output anything" is very reasonable.  Library calls, in
general, should return a success or failure code (or be void if there's
no way to fail).  They don't need to go printing things out themselves
(or even syslogging) -- that's the application's job.

Interpretation and reporting of the failure is usually a separate step.
In libc, you have errno (supported by a bunch of #defines to say what
is what); if you want a description, it's strerror(errno); if you just
want to print it out and move on, you have perror().  There's no reason
most other libraries can't provide the same three basic facilities.

Peter


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