<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="SGML-Tools 1.0.9"> <TITLE>The Linux-PAM Application Developers' Guide: Glossary of PAM related terms</TITLE> <LINK HREF="pam_appl-8.html" REL=next> <LINK HREF="pam_appl-6.html" REL=previous> <LINK HREF="pam_appl.html#toc7" REL=contents> </HEAD> <BODY> <A HREF="pam_appl-8.html">Next</A> <A HREF="pam_appl-6.html">Previous</A> <A HREF="pam_appl.html#toc7">Contents</A> <HR> <H2><A NAME="s7">7. Glossary of PAM related terms</A></H2> <P>The following are a list of terms used within this document. <P> <P> <DL> <P> <DT><B>Authentication token</B><DD><P>Generally, this is a password. However, a user can authenticate him/herself in a variety of ways. Updating the user's authentication token thus corresponds to <EM>refreshing</EM> the object they use to authenticate themself with the system. The word password is avoided to keep open the possibility that the authentication involves a retinal scan or other non-textual mode of challenge/response. <P> <DT><B>Credentials</B><DD><P>Having successfully authenticated the user, PAM is able to establish certain characteristics/attributes of the user. These are termed <EM>credentials</EM>. Examples of which are group memberships to perform privileged tasks with, and <EM>tickets</EM> in the form of environment variables etc. . Some user-credentials, such as the user's UID and GID (plus default group memberships) are not deemed to be PAM-credentials. It is the responsibility of the application to grant these directly. <P> </DL> <P> <HR> <A HREF="pam_appl-8.html">Next</A> <A HREF="pam_appl-6.html">Previous</A> <A HREF="pam_appl.html#toc7">Contents</A> </BODY> </HTML>
