[keycloak-dev] PAM integration with FreeIPA

Bruno Oliveira bruno at abstractj.org
Fri Jun 24 13:14:30 EDT 2016


On 2016-06-24, Bill Burke wrote:
>
>
> On 6/24/16 9:53 AM, John Dennis wrote:
>
> >
> > Let me try to clarify a few things.
> >
> > PAM is designed as a "conversation", there are a few analogues you could
> > compare it to:
> >
> > * a series of requests/responses
> >
> > * challenge/response authentication (e.g. CRAM)
> >
> > PAM has something equivalent to a session where state is stored during
> > the "conversation". When you use PAM you establish a context (session)
> > and iterate. In each iteration the PAM library will ask you for
> > something and you reply. The iteration stops when the library signals
> > completion.
> >
>
> Will the PAM conversation object be able to be serialized in-between web
> requests? Is it something that can be rebuilt with HTTP session information?
>
> > For simple password auth the iteration is very short. But depending on
> > how the PAM service is configured you could be prompted for other
> > things. I suspect with Web forms they way you handle this is via
> > redirects until such time as the PAM conversation completes.
> >
>
> What do you mean by "prompted"?  Are we going to have to screen-scrape this
> information, or is it a well defined structure?
>
> > So my suggestion would be to design this where there is a simple web
> > form prompting for username/password but allow for the fact you may have
> > to redirect to another page.
> >
>
> As I mentioned early, we already have these generic redirection
> capabilities.    Login is a "workflow" and you can define nodes in this
> workflow.  The current node in the flow can fail, pass, ignore, or challenge
> an incoming request.
>
> >
> > Does that help?
> >
>
> We're getting there!  :)  My current thoughts are that PAM integration
> should be implemented as a Keycloak Authenticator and user profile lookup,
> via SSSD, should be done via a User Federation Provider (the new interface).

Phew! I think we are on the same page about it.

>
> Bill

--

abstractj
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