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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><title>20.13. PAM Authentication</title><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheet.css" /><link rev="made" href="pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org" /><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets Vsnapshot" /><link rel="prev" href="auth-cert.html" title="20.12. Certificate Authentication" /><link rel="next" href="auth-bsd.html" title="20.14. BSD Authentication" /></head><body><div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/transitional" class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="5" align="center">20.13. PAM Authentication</th></tr><tr><td width="10%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="auth-cert.html" title="20.12. Certificate Authentication">Prev</a> </td><td width="10%" align="left"><a accesskey="u" href="client-authentication.html" title="Chapter 20. Client Authentication">Up</a></td><th width="60%" align="center">Chapter 20. Client Authentication</th><td width="10%" align="right"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html" title="PostgreSQL 11.5 Documentation">Home</a></td><td width="10%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="auth-bsd.html" title="20.14. BSD Authentication">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr></hr></div><div class="sect1" id="AUTH-PAM"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both">20.13. PAM Authentication</h2></div></div></div><a id="id-1.6.7.20.2" class="indexterm"></a><p>
This authentication method operates similarly to
<code class="literal">password</code> except that it uses PAM (Pluggable
Authentication Modules) as the authentication mechanism. The
default PAM service name is <code class="literal">postgresql</code>.
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
<a class="ulink" href="https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/pam/" target="_top">
<span class="productname">Linux-PAM</span> Page</a>.
</p><p>
The following configuration options are supported for PAM:
</p><div class="variablelist"><dl class="variablelist"><dt><span class="term"><code class="literal">pamservice</code></span></dt><dd><p>
PAM service name.
</p></dd><dt><span class="term"><code class="literal">pam_use_hostname</code></span></dt><dd><p>
Determines whether the remote IP address or the host name is provided
to PAM modules through the <code class="symbol">PAM_RHOST</code> item. 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.)
</p></dd></dl></div><p>
</p><div class="note"><h3 class="title">Note</h3><p>
If PAM is set up to read <code class="filename">/etc/shadow</code>, 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.
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