[users] synaptic on x86_64 (el4)

[Nicolas Thierry-Mieg]

Hi again,

This concerns an x86_64 centos 4.4 machine.

There is a problem with synaptic-0.57.2-3.el4.rf

This package installs /usr/sbin/synaptic; and it also sets up an access 
to synaptic in /usr/bin through consolehelper/userhelper (usermode package).
This allows to launch /usr/bin/synaptic as a user: it asks for the root 
password if necessary and then starts synaptic.

This works fine on other systems (FC4 and FC5 on i386 PCs).

It dies with a window saying "unknown error" on my new x86_64.
You may not see this problem if you usually sudo synaptic and have 
/usr/sbin before /usr/bin in your path.
You might also not see it if you have 32 bit pam installed (but it's not 
a dependancy of synaptic, and shouldn't be needed, so...)


The problem is that the package installs a bad /etc/pam.d/synaptic.
This file currently holds:
$ cat /etc/pam.d/synaptic
#%PAM-1.0
auth    sufficient      /lib/security/pam_rootok.so
auth    sufficient      /lib/security/pam_timestamp.so
auth    required        /lib/security/pam_stack.so service=system-auth
session required        /lib/security/pam_permit.so
session optional        /lib/security/pam_xauth.so
session optional        /lib/security/pam_timestamp.so
account required        /lib/security/pam_permit.so


I'm a total PAM newb, never had to play with this stuff before, but 
looking at the content of the other files in that dir it seems there are 
two possible solutions:
1. remove the path in every line before pam_*.so, so eg the first line 
would read:
auth    sufficient      pam_rootok.so
2. add $ISA/ in the path after /lib/security/ (no idea how that works), 
so eg the first line reads:
auth    sufficient      /lib/security/$ISA/pam_rootok.so

I've tested both solutions, they both work.


regards,
Nicolas


-- 
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Nicolas Thierry-Mieg
Laboratoire LSR-IMAG, BP 53, 38041 Grenoble Cedex 9, France
tel : (33/0)4-76-63-55-79, fax : (33/0)4-76-63-55-50
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