[Techtalk] SSH authentication via PAM-MySQL

[Aneesha Govil]

Hi,

At work I have a requirement wherein I want to authenticate SSH users based
on the usernames and passwords in a table in a MySQL database. I am able to
get it to use the passwords from the table but it is not picking up the
usernames. For example - if I add information as - testuser / testpassword
in the table and SSH as:

ssh testuser at localhost

The user is not authenticated even with the correct password. Now if I add
the information of a user as - root/root123 in the table and SSH as:

ssh root at localhost
password: root123

This is a successful login.
It seems that it is still not looking up usernames in the table. Any idea
how to accomplish this? The configuration files are as follows:

/etc/security/pam_mysql.conf

users.host=127.0.0.1:3306;
users.database=<dbname>;
users.db_user=<db_username>;
users.db_passwd=<db_password>;
users.table=userstest;
users.user_column=UserName;
users.password_column=PasswordId;
users.password_crypt=3;
users.disconnect_every_operation=true;
verbose=1;

/etc/pam.d/sshd
auth     sufficient   pam_mysql.so config_file=/etc/security/pam_mysql.conf
account  requisite    pam_mysql.so config_file=/etc/security/pam_mysql.conf
password sufficient   pam_mysql.so config_file=/etc/security/pam_mysql.conf
session  sufficient   pam_mysql.so config_file=/etc/security/pam_mysql.conf

I hope this is possible. What use is a PAM where we can only change where to
look-up passwords!

Please help.
Thanks,
Aneesha