pam_shells(8) — Linux manual page

PAM_SHELLS(8)                Linux-PAM Manual               PAM_SHELLS(8)

NAME         top

       pam_shells - PAM module to check for valid login shell

SYNOPSIS         top

       pam_shells.so

DESCRIPTION         top

       pam_shells is a PAM module that only allows access to the system
       if the user's shell is listed in /etc/shells.

       It also checks if /etc/shells is a plain file and not world
       writable.

OPTIONS         top

       This module does not recognise any options.

MODULE TYPES PROVIDED         top

       The auth and account module types are provided.

RETURN VALUES         top

       PAM_AUTH_ERR
           Access to the system was denied.

       PAM_SUCCESS
           The user's login shell was listed as valid shell in
           /etc/shells.

       PAM_SERVICE_ERR
           The module was not able to get the name of the user.

EXAMPLES         top

           auth  required  pam_shells.so

SEE ALSO         top

       shells(5), pam.conf(5), pam.d(5), pam(8)

AUTHOR         top

       pam_shells was written by Erik Troan <ewt@redhat.com>.

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the linux-pam (Pluggable Authentication
       Modules for Linux) project.  Information about the project can be
       found at ⟨http://www.linux-pam.org/⟩.  If you have a bug report
       for this manual page, see ⟨//www.linux-pam.org/⟩.  This page was
       obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/linux-pam/linux-pam.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At
       that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
       the repository was 2023-12-18.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
       a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Linux-PAM Manual                12/22/2023                  PAM_SHELLS(8)

Pages that refer to this page: shells(5)

HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH.