"illegal pam.conf entry"

From Brandonhutchinson.com

Revision as of 21:40, 17 September 2007

On Solaris systems, these errors may indicate that fields in /etc/pam.conf are separated by multiple spaces instead of a single space or tabs.

Sep 16 03:15:00 hosstname cron[14629]: [ID 431104 user.crit] illegal pam.conf entry: management: missing MODULE TYPE
Sep 16 03:15:00 hostname cron[14629]: [ID 828992 user.crit] illegal pam.conf entry: management: missing CONTROL FLAG

Incorrect:

$ grep -v '^#' /etc/pam.conf | cat -vet | tail -1
other   password required       pam_ldap.so.1$

Correct:

$ grep -v '^#' /etc/pam.conf | cat -vet | tail -1
other^Ipassword required^Ipam_ldap.so.1$

To fix, convert 2 or more spaces into tabs:

# perl -pi.orig -e 's/\s{2,}/\t/g' /etc/pam.conf

Or convert 2 or more spaces into a single space:

# perl -pi.orig -e 's/\s{2,}/\s/g' /etc/pam.conf

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