20.13. PAM Authentication
This authentication method operates similarly to
password
except that it uses PAM (Pluggable
Authentication Modules) as the authentication mechanism. The
default PAM service name is
postgresql
.
PAM is used only to validate user name/password pairs and optionally the
connected remote host name or IP address. Therefore the user must already
exist in the database before PAM can be used for authentication. For more
information about PAM, please read the
Linux-PAM
Page
.
The following configuration options are supported for PAM:
-
pamservice -
PAM service name.
-
pam_use_hostname -
Determines whether the remote IP address or the host name is provided to PAM modules through the
PAM_RHOSTitem. By default, the IP address is used. Set this option to 1 to use the resolved host name instead. Host name resolution can lead to login delays. (Most PAM configurations don't use this information, so it is only necessary to consider this setting if a PAM configuration was specifically created to make use of it.)
Note
If PAM is set up to read
/etc/shadow
, authentication
will fail because the PostgreSQL server is started by a non-root
user. However, this is not an issue when PAM is configured to use
LDAP or other authentication methods.