PAM Offline Authentication

Offline Authentication using winbindd

In order to enable offline authentication configure Samba to use winbind in nsswitch and for PAM (FIXME: point to other docs).

Then make sure smb.conf contains:

"winbind offline logon = yes"

Enabling offline authentication in pam_winbind

First of all, make sure that you can login using PAM and your windows credentials, e.g. using ssh:

ssh YOURDOM\\youruser@localhost

You cannot continue if login via PAM (pam_winbind) is not working.

Now, pam_winbind needs to set the offline flag as well, you can do so by either

• adding "cached_login = yes" to /etc/security/pam_winbind.conf. That file should look like this:

#
# pam_winbind configuration file
#
# /etc/security/pam_winbind.conf
#
[global]
# request a cached login if possible
# (needs "winbind offline logon = yes" in smb.conf)
cached_login = yes

This will enable offline ability globally for all applications using PAM. If you want to have more fine grained control about services that use pam_winbind's offline mode then you can do so by

• adding the "cached_login" option into individual pam-configuration files (usualy below /etc/pam.d/$SERVICE)

Testing offline authentication

Start winbindd, authenticate successfully at least once while winbind is online

/etc/init.d/winbind start

 wbinfo -K YOURDOM\\youruser%password

Now you can switch winbindd to offline mode by hand (for testing) with the smbcontrol command.

smbcontrol winbind offline

If you now repeat the command

wbinfo -K YOURDOM\\youruser%password

You should get

user_flgs: LOGON_CACHED_ACCOUNT

in the output.

Your system is now prepared to use pam_winbind while offline. Please try to login to your localhost, e.g. using ssh

ssh YOURDOM\\youruser@localhost