Are you sure? I remember switching from redhat 9 to Slackware back in 2004 because at this time it was one on the few distro compatible with 2.6

IIRC, a 2.6.something kernel was available either in testing/ or in extra/, but I didn't have the competence at the time to build HAL and some other stuff required for auto-mounting, so I finally gave up.

Hmm maybe you're right, I recall I was in awe when compiling a new 2.6 kernel in Slackware and found that in Slackware you didn't need heavy patching to do it (as opposed to Redhat)

http://www.slackware.com/announce/10.0.php

And the others of us (can't let reaper take all the "FUD" flack here) who dislike and have had nasty experiences with PAM could stay on 14.1 until we get one of the non-Linux OSes we'd rather be running working with our video card (in case the tone is ambiguous I really really don't mean this as, "if you do pam i'm boycotting you" or whatever -- Slackware for me was always a temporary solution, though it's definitely my favourite among Linux distros, only partly because it lacks PAM). From reading certain people on the usenet group seems like there's lots of support for sticking with an old release for quite a long time, if we find we really can't stomach a hypothetical inclusion of PAM.

I've noticed the low frequencies being cut out too.

(yes, I know that that was a metaphor, but I had to get point that out).

If kikinovak wants to fling mud, I'll fling some too...

I actually have built BLFS both with and without PAM, but with PAM I have more trouble dealing with permissions and sudo misbehavior as trying to run anything using "su" with the default setup prompts for passwords and often sudo and su both refuse to accept the root password when I use PAM. I have to heavily use the wheel group with PAM with no password prompt to the point where it's a nuisance trying to get work done as root over sudo unless i open a user account up with near-root permission levels. The last time I tried tinkering with PAM to make it more flexible, I got locked out of my system completely, even as root, and it's not fun spending 26 hours just to recompile LFS and enough of BLFS again to get a working desktop environment going again, thank you very much.

To me, and from my experience, PAM is nice and offers that cushion of security, but like-wise PAM can be a pain. PAM, like any other security issue has it's good and bad points as you have to juggle security versus usability, and that is something best left to a system administrator, NOT a distribution maintainer.

That's almost as bad as those guys who push sudo usage like a religion on Ubuntu saying you don't need root. If we're going to do PAM on Slackware let's just lock out root while we're at it too. After all we have to be like everyone else now don't we?

I hope you realize that these two formats are worlds apart. One of them being absolute garbage.

I guess you mean:
You call that flinging mud? You?

Since over 90% (I'm guessing) of Linux installations use PAM and most of those are used by "ordinary users" (not distro maintainers and not sys admins) and do not suffer the problems that you had, I would surmise that your system was poorly set up. I suggest you contact your help desk for some more expert advice.

Being able to leave it solely to a sys admin is probably the exact opposite of the most common Linux use case. People install a distro and expect everything to work i.e. reasonable defaults are included. For unusual tasks most ordinary users don't have access to a real sys admin and have to muddle their own way through as best they can. Setting up PAM themselves will leave them in situations like you found yourself.

Yawn ..

chris

3 members found this post helpful.

Yeah, life is not easy for the rookies. From a few of your posts I had the patience to read you look like a typical greenhorn with enormous ego. LFS and BLFS like Slackware are great distros to learn from but just copying from the book and pasting into the command line wont teach you anything. Better stop flooding the forum with nonsense and take your time to understand what you are doing. System administration is not rocket science. Making a disro neither.

Cheers.

5 members found this post helpful.

A good look from outside is always needed, or... I can't stand it without adding a word. What is one of the two fundamental lemma of Slackware? Simplicity. Simplex sigillum veri is a very old motto. It applies to science. The simpler the theory the more plausible. It's called elegance in math jargon. About the consequences of simplicity in a system, they are numberless. The first of all, you are more likely to understand what you are doing. I mean, understand.

Patrick Volkerding once applauded when I said here: "[about udev] I like static devices". That's because simplicity in system design is not just a word for him, I'm sure about that.

1 members found this post helpful.

Wow... just wow...

Reaper, he has a point. A lot of distros uses PAM and it is not as problematic as you described in your case, it might be some poor configuration.

I've gone by the books on PAM, not just what was shown as examples in BLFS. BLFS linked to this guide which I've read and tried to implement:

http://www.linux-pam.org/Linux-PAM-h...x-PAM_SAG.html

So either the book is wrong, and/or the implementation from the book is wrong, which is why I don't use PAM. Plus, I don't need to take crap from anyone except the administrators here, and I'm certainly not the only person here who's had problems with PAM, but I'm just maybe the first bloke to speak up about it.

Labeling and name calling... sorry man, I'm off this topic so PM me if you wish.

@stf92

I can't understand why should we put the distribution making and science at the same level and apply scientific principles to technical tasks. Making a distro is a simple task of assembling pieces of software. Sure one has to read docs edit a bunch of configs write build scripts and so on but it has nothing to do with science.

Simplicity is good but when it becomes an obsession and hurts the functionality the distribution has a problem.

Cheers

2 members found this post helpful.

Or it might just be that PAM is a weak design. At least one other distro still has at least one outstanding PAM bug after all these years: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugr...cgi?bug=672936

I guess I was poisoned against PAM by stumbling into this during my week of debian (before I gave up and settled on Slackware for now). Yet somehow I used OpenBSD for years without ever even being aware of bsd auth, which provides similar capabilities without getting in the face of users who only need passwd auth. The fact that there's actually an .so named pam_umask.so with a whole man page, I find it absolutely ridiculous. Imagine, loading a shared object just to set your umask. What kind of crack were these pam people smoking?

But as a novice I shouldn't judge without at least trying to learn. And yet when I find the documentation (which holding to normal linux quality of docs starts with, "Here is the documentation for Linux-PAM. As you will see it is currently not complete"), what do you find but...
Come on. How is anyone who hasn't been immersed in this shit for years supposed to take a system like that seriously?

7 members found this post helpful.