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Bug 531006 - ./configure fails without PAM
./configure fails without PAM
Status: RESOLVED NOTABUG
Product: gdm
Classification: Core
Component: general
2.24.x
Other All
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: GDM maintainers
GDM maintainers
: 554089 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2008-05-02 06:03 UTC by Thomas Zajic
Modified: 2010-06-04 20:48 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: 2.23/2.24



Description Thomas Zajic 2008-05-02 06:03:34 UTC
Please describe the problem:
I'm trying to build gdm-2.22.0 on a Slackware 12.0 system, but ./configure fails because of missing PAM headers and libraries. Slackware simply doesn't ship any PAM related stuff, and that's rather unlikely to ever change AFAIK.

Does that mean I'm now stuck with gdm-2.20.x forever?

Steps to reproduce:
1. find a Slackware system or any other *NIX system without PAM
2. unpack gdm-2.22.0 sources
3. run ./configure


Actual results:
$ ./configure
[...]
checking for pam_start in -lpam... no
configure: error: "PAM libraries not found"
$ 

Expected results:
GDM should configure and build normally even without PAM, as it was the case with previous versions.

Does this happen every time?
Yup.

Other information:
Comment 1 William Jon McCann 2008-07-20 20:27:49 UTC
The new GDM only has a backend for PAM.  If someone writes another good quality backend I'm sure we'd accept it.
Comment 2 Thomas Zajic 2008-09-25 22:05:24 UTC
While gdm-2.22.x works fine without PAM now, the same problem shows up once again in gdm-2.24.0 ... ./configure fails, even though I specified "--enable-authentication-scheme=shadow" (which doesn't seem to do a whole lot, unfortunately, other then setting a variable in configure which in turn isn't used again anywhere).
Comment 3 Brian Cameron 2008-09-26 14:55:59 UTC
I don't believe that last statement is true.  GDM 2.20 was the last version of GDM to support building/running without PAM.  GDM 2.22 and later requires PAM.  As Jon says, someone needs to write a quality backend for crypt/shadow backends.  The code already exists in the old GDM so shouldn't be too hard to port for people who need Slackware or other distros that don't support PAM.
Comment 4 Thomas Zajic 2008-09-26 15:37:05 UTC
You're right - I was pretty sure I was running 2.22.x, but in fact I'm still running gdm-2.20.8. Sorry for the noise! :-)
Comment 5 Matthias Clasen 2008-11-08 04:55:53 UTC
*** Bug 554089 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 6 William Jon McCann 2010-06-04 20:48:52 UTC
We depend on PAM.