Dr Andrew Scott G7VAV

MBCS, MIET, Member ACM, Member IEEE

Senior Lecturer
School of Computing
and Communications

D35 InfoLab21
Lancaster University
Lancaster, LA1 4WA
United Kingdom

June 2025
26	27	28	29	30	31	1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	1	2	3	4	5	6

PAM_ROOTOK

Section: Linux-PAM Manual (8)
Updated: 06/04/2011
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

pam_rootok - Gain only root access

SYNOPSIS

pam_rootok.so [debug]

DESCRIPTION

pam_rootok is a PAM module that authenticates the user if their UID is 0. Applications that are created setuid-root generally retain the UID of the user but run with the authority of an enhanced effective-UID. It is the real UID that is checked.

OPTIONS

debug

: Print debug information.

MODULE TYPES PROVIDED

The auth, acct and password module types are provided.

RETURN VALUES

PAM_SUCCESS

: The UID is 0.

PAM_AUTH_ERR

: The UID is not 0.

EXAMPLES

In the case of the su(1) application the historical usage is to permit the superuser to adopt the identity of a lesser user without the use of a password. To obtain this behavior with PAM the following pair of lines are needed for the corresponding entry in the /etc/pam.d/su configuration file:

# su authentication. Root is granted access by default.
auth  sufficient   pam_rootok.so
auth  required     pam_unix.so

AUTHOR

pam_rootok was written by Andrew G. Morgan, <morgan@kernel.org>.

for client (none)

http://www.andrew-scott.uk/

Andrew Scott

http://www.andrew-scott.co.uk/