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Pluggable Authentication Module
A method of seperating the authentication code from each application responsible for authenticating users
Normally, in order to introduce a new authentication mechanism, every application must be updated to support the new mechanism.
Want to use /etc/virtualhost-passwd rather than /etc/passwd for some services?
Want to query passwords from a SAMBA server?
What about an LDAP, or RADIUS server?
MySQL database?
Alternatively, every application can support a common authentication API
PAM defines that API
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