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6.10 The mail module

Synopsis

Module Name:

pam_mail

Author:

Andrew G. Morgan <morgan@parc.power.net>

Maintainer:

Author

Management groups provided:

auth

Cryptographically sensitive:

Security rating:

Clean code base:

System dependencies:

Default mail directory /var/spool/mail/

Network aware:

Overview of module

This module looks at the user's mail directory and indicates whether the user has any mail in it.

Authentication component

Recognized arguments:

debug; dir=direcory-name; nopen; close; noenv; empty

Description:

This module provides the ``you have new mail'' service to the user. It can be plugged into any application that has credential hooks. It gives a single message indicating the newness of any mail it finds in the user's mail folder. This module also sets the Linux-PAM environment variable, MAIL, to the user's mail directory.

Although the module supplies functions for the authentication management group of functions, it cannot be used to authenticate a user; its authentication function instructs libpam to simply ignore it when authenticating the user.

The behavior of this module can be modified with one of the following flags:

Examples/suggested usage:

This module can be used to indicate that the user has new mail when they login to the system. Here is a sample entry for your /etc/pam.conf file:

#
# do we have any mail?
#
login   auth     optional       pam_mail.so

Note, some applications may perform this function themselves. In such cases, this module is not necessary.


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