:pserver: with PAM authentication

PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) is the convenient and flexible method of managing authentication methods used by particular programs. You can change the way an application handles authentication simply editing an appropriate configuration file: no recompilation is ever needed. You can add entirely new methods of authentication simply adding new PAM-module.

There is a special version of `checkpassword', called `checkpassword-pam'. It takes the following arguments:

checkpassword-pam service-name cvs-binary-with-args

The service-name argument specifies the "service" that is used for authentication purposes. Shortly, service name is the name of the file in `/etc/pam.d/' directory which contains the list of PAM modules consulted for authentication.

Most often, while setting up the CVS server, you will use the `cvspserver' as the service name; that is, the appropriate PAM-file will be called `/etc/pam.d/cvspserver'.

The `checkpassword-pam' calls the PAM library, asking it whether the username and password are valid. If it is, the `checkpassword-pam' changes user id to that of the provided username.

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