login.1   [plain text]


.\" $Id$
.\" 
.Dd April 22, 2005
.Dt LOGIN 1
.Os HEIMDAL
.Sh NAME
.Nm login
.Nd
authenticate a user and start new session
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl fp
.Op Fl a Ar level
.Op Fl h Ar hostname
.Ar [username]
.Sh DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents  the 
.Nm login 
program distributed with the Heimdal Kerberos 5 implementation, it may
differ in important ways from your system version.
.Pp
The
.Nm login
programs logs users into the system. It is intended to be run by
system daemons like
.Xr getty 8 
or
.Xr telnetd 8 .
If you are already logged in, but want to change to another user, you
should use
.Xr su 1 .
.Pp
A username can be given on the command line, else one will be prompted
for.
.Pp
A password is required to login, unless the 
.Fl f
option is given (indicating that the calling program has already done
proper authentication). With
.Fl f
the user will be logged in without further questions. 
.Pp
For password authentication Kerberos 5, Kerberos 4 (if compiled in),
OTP (if compiled in) and local
.No ( Pa /etc/passwd ) 
passwords are supported. OTP will be used if the the user is
registered to use it, and
.Nm login
is given the option
.Fl a Li otp .
When using OTP, a challenge is shown to the user.
.Pp
Further options are:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Fl a Ar string
Which authentication mode to use, the only supported value is
currently
.Dq otp .
.It Fl f
Indicates that the user is already authenticated. This happens, for
instance, when login is started by telnetd, and the user has proved
authentic via Kerberos.
.It Fl h Ar hostname
Indicates which host the user is logging in from. This is passed from
telnetd, and is entered into the login database.
.It Fl p
This tells
.Nm login
to preserve all environment variables. If not given, only the
.Dv TERM
and
.Dv TZ
variables are preserved. It could be a security risk to pass random
variables to 
.Nm login
or the user shell, so the calling daemon should make sure it only
passes
.Dq safe
variables.
.El
.Pp
The process of logging user in proceeds as follows.
.Pp
First a check is made that logins are allowed at all. This usually
means checking
.Pa /etc/nologin .
If it exists, and the user trying to login is not root, the contents
is printed, and then login exits.
.Pp
Then various system parameters are set up, like changing the owner of
the tty to the user, setting up signals, setting the group list, and
user and group id. Also various machine specific tasks are performed.
.Pp
Next 
.Nm login
changes to the users home directory, or if that fails, to 
.Pa / .
The environment is setup, by adding some required variables (such as
.Dv PATH ) , 
and also authentication related ones (such as
.Dv KRB5CCNAME ) .
If an environment file exists
.No ( Pa /etc/environment ) ,
variables are set according to
it.
.Pp
If one or more login message files are configured, their contents is
printed to the terminal.
.Pp
If a login time command is configured, it is executed. A logout time
command can also be configured, which makes 
.Nm login
fork, and wait for the user shell to exit, and then run the command.
This can be used to clean up user credentials.
.Pp
Finally, the user's shell is executed. If the user logging in is root,
and root's login shell does not exist, a default shell (usually 
.Pa /bin/sh )
is also tried before giving up.
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
These environment variables are set by login (not including ones set by 
.Pa /etc/environment ) :
.Pp
.Bl -tag -compact -width USERXXLOGNAME
.It Dv PATH
the default system path
.It Dv HOME
the user's home directory (or possibly 
.Pa / )
.It Dv USER , Dv LOGNAME
both set to the username
.It Dv SHELL
the user's shell
.It Dv TERM , Dv TZ
set to whatever is passed to 
.Nm login
.It Dv KRB5CCNAME
if the password is verified via Kerberos 5, this will point to the
credentials cache file
.It Dv KRBTKFILE
if the password is verified via Kerberos 4, this will point to the
ticket file
.El
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -compact -width Ds
.It Pa /etc/environment
Contains a set of environment variables that should be set in addition
to the ones above. It should contain sh-style assignments like 
.Dq VARIABLE=value .
Note that they are not parsed the way a shell would. No variable
expansion is performed, and all strings are literal, and quotation
marks should not be used. Everything after a hash mark is considered a
comment. The following are all different (the last will set the
variable
.Dv BAR ,
not
.Dv FOO ) .
.Bd -literal -offset indent
FOO=this is a string
FOO="this is a string"
BAR= FOO='this is a string'
.Ed
.It Pa /etc/login.access
See 
.Xr login.access 5 .
.It Pa /etc/login.conf
This is a termcap style configuration file, that contains various
settings used by
.Nm login .
Currently only the
.Dq default
capability record is used. The possible capability strings include:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -compact -width Ds
.It Li environment
This is a comma separated list of environment files that are read in
the order specified. If this is missing the default
.Pa /etc/environment
is used.
.It Li login_program
This program will be executed just before the user's shell is started.
It will be called without arguments.
.It Li logout_program
This program will be executed just after the user's shell has
terminated. It will be called without arguments. This program will be
the parent process of the spawned shell.
.It Li motd
A comma separated list of text files that will be printed to the
user's terminal before starting the shell. The string
.Li welcome
works similarly, but points to a single file.
.It Li limits
Points to a file containing ulimit settings for various users. Syntax
is inspired by what pam_limits uses, and the default is
.Pa /etc/security/limits.conf .
.El
.It Pa /etc/nologin
If it exists, login is denied to all but root. The contents of this
file is printed before login exits.
.El
.Pp
Other
.Nm login
programs typically print all sorts of information by default, such as
last time you logged in, if you have mail, and system message files.
This version of
.Nm login
does not, so there is no reason for 
.Pa .hushlogin
files or similar. We feel that these tasks are best left to the user's
shell, but the 
.Li login_program
facility allows for a shell independent solution, if that is desired.
.Sh EXAMPLES
A 
.Pa login.conf
file could look like:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
default:\\
	:motd=/etc/motd,/etc/motd.local:\\
	:limits=/etc/limits.conf:
.Ed
.Pp
The
.Pa limits.conf
file consists of a table with four whitespace separated fields. First
field is a username or a groupname (prefixed with
.Sq @ ) , 
or 
.Sq * .
Second field is
.Sq soft ,
.Sq hard ,
or
.Sq -
(the last meaning both soft and hard).
Third field is a limit name (such as
.Sq cpu 
or 
.Sq core ) .
Last field is the limit value (a number or
.Sq - 
for unlimited). In the case of data sizes, the value is in kilobytes,
and cputime is in minutes.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr su 1 ,
.Xr login.access 5 ,
.Xr getty 8 ,
.Xr telnetd 8
.Sh AUTHORS
This login program was written for the Heimdal Kerberos 5
implementation. The login.access code was written by Wietse Venema.
.\".Sh BUGS